


The Last Post

by jesmel



Category: House M.D.
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-13
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-07 23:17:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesmel/pseuds/jesmel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 1942, the world is at war and House has nothing left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to those who helped me with betas and cheering: everytimeyougo, athousandsmiles, 2tailswaggin and snark_b8it.
> 
> Also thanks to the talented artists who took the time to make some lovely art for this story.  
> 
> 
> [](http://community.livejournal.com/house_bigbang/34233.html)  
> by [](http://pandorashollow.livejournal.com/profile)[**pandorashollow**](http://pandorashollow.livejournal.com/)
> 
> [](http://community.livejournal.com/house_bigbang/32221.html#cutid3)  
> by [](http://vicodin_martini.livejournal.com/profile)[**vicodin_martini**](http://vicodin_martini.livejournal.com/)

It was cold.  His body was shaking and he was having trouble moving.  The air was too thick and the silence was oppressive.  He was balancing precariously on a duckboard over a wide pool of mud.  He knew that if he fell, that would be it.  He’d seen men and even horses disappear into these endless pools of slush and no one ever got pulled out again, swallowed by the earth without so much as a scream.  Even if someone were quick enough to throw you something to hold on to, the weight of your clothes and equipment would drag you down, the earth welcoming you into its embrace.  The duckboards weren’t wide enough and they were too slippery for any sort of rescue effort to have a chance at success.  Most men simply watched sadly as their fellow soldier drowned quickly.  House knew that the mud wanted him, like it was a living thing capable of such desires.  He could feel it somehow.  So he was careful, making sure that his foot was safely in the middle of each wooden plank before he took a step.  He didn’t want to be here, had fought so hard to stay away and there was no way in hell he was going to die in this cesspool.  He would make it.  His breathing sounded harsh in his ears, the only sound at all.

Then, suddenly, a man burst out from the mud beneath his feet, leaping into the air, his face twisted into a mask of anger and his mouth open in a silent scream.  There was nowhere for House to go, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, just endless pools of mud around him.  He stood, frozen, as the mudman speared his hand through House’s thigh, emitting a piercing war cry while he did so.

            ***

Greg House woke up, his breath catching raggedly in his chest and his hand clutching at his thigh.  The rapid pounding of his heart beat loud in his ears and he kneaded at his leg uselessly, trying to relieve the ache as he took in his surroundings and gradually relaxed back against the hay.  This dream was nothing new.  It haunted his sleep most nights, some variation of it.  But there was always mud and always something ended up in his thigh.

His leg ached.  A bone deep, pervading pain that never left, only lessened slightly if he could get his hands on something.  Unfortunately, it was hard to find good painkillers now that he wasn’t working at the hospital anymore.  The damn war effort got all the good stuff.  So much for the poor bastards who were screwed up from the last time some idiot tried to conquer Europe.  The words _dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori_ seemed like the only truth he had left; death would have indeed been sweet.  Instead, he had a half life and he had managed to destroy most of that.  His chances of living much longer were slim, yet he was good with that; actually he was _counting_ on that.  Too much of a coward to simply end it himself, he had instead embarked on a fool’s mission, one with only a minuscule chance of any sort of success and a huge probability of pain and death.  If he had stayed where he was, shut away in his flat, he likely would have drunk and drugged himself to death in fairly short order.  But then, he would never know and he couldn’t stand that.  If he was going to go out, he wanted to _know_, to find out what happened to his best friend.  That gave him a purpose and only made him slightly less pathetic than if he had just curled up like a beaten dog and embraced the inevitable.

Outside, the rain continued to fall unabated, a constant steady strum of water falling down and invading everything that it touched. Even under the shelter of the barn, he couldn’t shut it out, the sound of the drops striking the roof above him reminded him that it was still coming and his leg joined in to point out to him that, even inside, he couldn’t completely escape the damp.  His leg would still know and it would ache that little bit more.  He’d had two years of being constantly wet and dirty and that was more than enough.  More than enough mud and water to last a lifetime, of stepping onto sodden ground only to sink in to his knees, of never being able to feel completely dry or clean, of the constant stench of damp everywhere he turned, He shook his head, trying to drive those thoughts out of his mind.  The sooner he got out of France, the better.

So far, he had managed to make his way by hitching lifts, sneaking into barns on farms while families slept and spending nights in dark jazz clubs in the city.  That only lasted until the manager noticed him in the corner and turfed him out, making him stagger into the hazy dawn reluctantly, forced to face another day.  Without the hospital to go to every morning, without the prospect of medicine to practice, there was very little to motivate him to put one foot in front of the other.  So he had seized on this idea, this need to know what had happened to Wilson and his wife and made it his focus.  It kept him moving.

Pulling his coat as tightly as possible and wrapping his arms around himself, House settled down in the straw, trying to get as comfortable as he could while he attempted to block out the noises outside and get some sleep.  His body was exhausted and he was sure he looked like crap - which was admittedly only slightly worse than he normally looked - but his mind was the thing that prevented him from sleeping the most, even more than his leg.  He could never just get it to shut off and leave him be.  Dreams invaded the little sleep that he did manage and he often had to resort to drink or drugs to numb himself sufficiently.  But he’d run out of whiskey and he didn’t want to waste the morphine he’d stolen from the hospital before he’d left- not yet anyway.  Now he was no longer employed at a hospital, getting drugs was going to be a lot harder and he tried to resist the urge to lose himself in the oblivion the morphine offered, not until he could find himself another supply and be sure he wasn’t going to run out.  It was wartime and rationing was all the rage, so he was just doing his bit for king and country.  That and the idea of being stuck somewhere with no morphine and having to go through withdrawal was really unappealing.  It was better to be sensible now, his brain told him.  If only his body would listen.

Closing his eyes, he tried to drift back to sleep, knowing even as he did it that it was futile.  His mind went back over twenty years, back to his service in the Great War.  He hadn’t wanted to go and had refused to sign up when all the other idiots his age ran off to offer themselves up as pointless sacrifices.  Citing his medical studies, he was happy to ignore the disgusted stares of people on the street as they saw a fit young man of age stay behind.  White feathers were just feathers, to be flicked away.  His fiancé keenly felt the shame of being associated with a coward but he resisted her attempts at emotional manipulation.  Even the shame and ire of his father, a decorated hero from the war in South Africa, was nothing new and did not bother him.  It wasn’t until he was threatened with jail as a deserter that he gave in and went.  Not as a Tommy though.  He had enough medical knowledge to enlist as a doctor so at least he spent the bulk of his time back at the casualty clearing stations.  Pulling pieces of metal out of various body parts or stitching people up was as boring as hell and the conditions weren’t much better than the frontline, but he had a slightly smaller chance of being shot or bayoneted.  Only slight though.

His service during his time in uniform had been far from stellar.  Insubordination charges littered his file, along with various complaints of drunkenness, lateness and just generally having a bad attitude.  And yet they refused to send him home, instead forcing him back to work, often at the business end of the barrel of an MP’s gun.  The other doctors weren’t exactly pleased to see him either, for he made his disdain for the war effort well known and could frequently be heard berating his patients instead of trying to calm them.  The nurses hated having to work with him as he was short tempered and cruel with his words.  House was a terrible excuse for an officer but they were so short on medical personnel that they could not afford to lose him to the MPs permanently.  So he continued on, counting the days until some idiot in a position of power would come to their senses and end this pointless slaughter of millions.  Until Passchendaele.

They had been at Passchendaele for a couple of months, patching up the never-ending supply of wounded that simply poured in with the consistency of the Thames and declaring just as many men past help.  The ground shook almost constantly with mortar fire and rounds were rocking the medical camp as well.  To call it hell on earth would be generous because this place didn’t resemble any place on earth that House had ever seen or wanted to see again.  An officer had called for a doctor to move forward because they couldn’t get the wounded back fast enough and the colonel in charge of the CCS had quickly pointed straight at House.   A very determined sergeant had literally dragged House outside before he could come up with a sufficient protest as to why some other unfortunate idiot should have to go instead of him. 

Making his way to closer to the front line had been harrowing but he had kept his emotions in check.  His goal was to do his job and then escape back at the earliest opportunity.  A moan of pain had caught the sergeant’s attention and he had led House to a foxhole where a young soldier lay half in and half out of the mud soaked pit, clutching his stomach in agony.  The sergeant had dragged the man out and on to a flat section of ground so that House could look at him when, from House’s point of view, the world exploded.

When he opened his eyes, he was a good five metres away from where he had been kneeling.  He was lying on his back, his body ached and he couldn’t hear anything at all.  All he could see as he looked up was a grey sky and trees, burnt and broken so that they were stripped of any sort of bark and foliage, leaving only the blackened trunks pointing to the heavens.  And then he swallowed and the world came rushing back again.  There was screaming and shouting and the sound of gunfire not far away, but there was no movement in the immediate area.  Painfully lifting his head, he saw the sergeant almost within arm’s reach, but he was unmoving.  When he turned his head, he saw why; the lower half of the sergeant’s body lay a further three metres from his upper half.  The man had literally been blown in two.  Well, at least he wouldn’t be doing anything to stop House from returning to the CCS and _not_ going on to the front line.

As he struggled to his feet, he heard a noise coming from behind the remains of a tree.  Tensing, he stooped and grabbed the sergeant’s weapon, cocking the gun and pointing it in the direction of the sound, lest someone come charging out from the murky twilight.  When no one came and the noise continued on, House stepped hesitantly towards it because that was the way back.   As he approached, he saw that it was the soldier they had originally stopped to help.  The lucky bugger was still alive, just thrown away by the artillery blast. 

Still, lucky was a relative term because this guy had his insides spilled out.  The young soldier was mumbling and moaning as he tried desperately to hold his intestines in with his hands.  No way was he getting up to impede House’s progress away.  House walked more confidently now, past the soldier, close enough to hear what the guy was saying.  The poor idiot was crying for his mother, begging her to come and help him.  House shook his head but then paused in his retreat.  He didn’t want to help this kid, it was a hindrance he didn’t need.  But if he took a casualty back with him, then no one would even think of accusing him of simply running away.  He had a valid reason to go back now.  Rolling his eyes heavenward, House turned around.

The kid was hunched partially on his side now, facing away, and hadn’t even noticed House dropping to his knees beside him.  He started when House grabbed his arm and tried to pull him around so he could get a better look at what he was dealing with.  Instead, the young soldier resisted, trying to roll away and lowly moaning, “no”.

“Shut up,” House instructed.  “I’m a doctor.  Let me look.”

“No, no, no,” the kid moaned again.  “I want my mum.  Please.”

“Your mother’s safe at home, petting her cat or whatever.  If you want to make it back to her, you need to let me fix you.”

“No!” the soldier screamed.  “I won’t go.  You can’t take me.  Bastard!”

Blowing out a frustrated breath and beginning to reconsider whether this was worth the hassle, House reached into his webbing to find enough morphine to shut the kid up and make him compliant.  There was a flash of movement in the corner of his eye.  His brain screamed at him to react but his body wasn’t quick enough.  Feet slipped in the mud for a brief second, trying vainly for traction before the blinding pain exploded in his leg. 

Steel penetrated flesh and muscle, nicking the bone as it travelled through.  House cried out as he fell back on his arse, the bayonet belonging to his patient now embedded deeply in his right thigh.  Before he could do anything, the young soldier summoned the strength to rip out the knife, one hand trying to hold his own spilling intestines inside his gut.  As his hands went to his leg to try and stem the blood flow, House looked up to meet the soldier’s eyes and saw only hatred and fever burning in there.

“Fuck you, Hun,” the kid managed, before his eyes rolled up into the back of his head and he keeled over, dead.

House would have laughed at the irony if only his leg hadn’t felt like it was on fire.  The one time he stopped to try and help someone voluntarily, he got an idiot who was so far gone he couldn’t tell the difference between a doctor for his own side and a German soldier.  If the tosser wasn’t dead already, House would have shoved his face into the mud and finished him off.  At least he had medical supplies on him and it was a good thing he didn’t waste the morphine on this bloke.

It took him a long time to get back to the Casualty Clearing Station and by the time he got there, his wound was filthy.  his hands shaking with the pain, he was unable to treat himself and was put into triage with the rest of the masses.  He was promptly stitched up by an incompetent moron and shoved off to the side.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it.  Infection set in, his leg burning and a fever taking hold of his entire body.  The pain was excruciating and the colonel in charge, who had sent him out in the first place, simply instructed the surgeon to cut it off.  House refused.  It wasn’t necessary to take his entire leg!  He wouldn’t go back a cripple, someone to be pitied and looked after.  Before he’d enlisted, he’d seen those young men coming home without limbs, their pant leg pinned up as they were pushed around in wheelchairs.  No way was he living like that.  If his leg couldn’t be saved, he didn’t want to live.

The colonel had listened to his rant impassively and simply reiterated, “Cut it off or let him die.  I don’t care which.”  Then he’d left House with the surgeon.  In desperation, House had pleaded with his fellow doctor and the man had eventually agreed to try to merely cut out the infected tissue and treat the rest with antibiotics.  But a battlefield operating room was not the place for finesse, so when he finally awakened, bathed in stale sweat and lying in an uncomfortable bed in a Royal Army Medical Corps facility, his leg was a mangled mess and he was in pain. 

He was sent home from the war with a limp, a cane and a prescription bottle of useless painkillers.  They gave him a medal as well but he threw that across the room and never picked it up.  His father told him that he was _lucky_, better men than him had paid a heavier price.  He told his father to fuck off and his mother had cried.  His fiancé had tried to comfort him but all he could see was the pity in her eyes and he shut her out, over and over again as they fought over the fact that she had been the one to push him to enlist in the first place.  He had wanted to move out of the city but she had cajoled him into giving in, telling him that they could never be married if he was officially labelled a coward.  So he used her as someone to blame for his woes until she got sick of his shit and left him.  The last he’d heard, she had married a prissy schoolteacher named Mark.

In the end, he did the only thing he could, short of drinking everything he could get his hands on and drowning in a pool of his own vomit.  He went back to school, finished his studies and got a job practising medicine.  And so it went until he managed to completely wreck that too and now he was here, cold and wet, in France again, where it had all started, like some sort of vicious circle.

Fuck it.  Fumbling in his bag, House eventually found what he was looking for, administered the dose and then settled back to wait for the sweet relief morphine offered to claim him.


	2. Part Two

The next morning, he was awakened by farm activity, the noises slowly seeping into his fuzzy mind.  The morphine had done its job and he had slept for several hours, the sun now high in the sky as he limped to the open barn door.  The farmer must have come in at some point and seen him but not bothered to disturb the sleeping vagrant.  By the door, there was a glass of water and a small loaf of bread and some cheese.  House drained the water, replaced the glass and collected the food in one hand as he left.  There was little attraction in being cornered by a friendly French farmer and his cheery wife, other than the prospect of some free hot food.  But his desire for solitude and the need to keep moving beat out the possibility of something other than bread and cheese to eat.  That was enough for now and he had money to buy a meal later.  He didn't want to answer polite questions or worse, endure pity when they took in his cripple status.

From outward appearances -unshaven, untidy and unkempt- he would seem to be homeless and destitute.  House cared little for appearances or how others perceived him.  He looked how he did because it was easier and he simply didn’t care.  It wasn’t like he was trying to impress a woman or a prospective employer.  His job was gone and as for women, no one had spent any intimate time with him without a cash payment afterwards for longer than he cared to remember.  There had been one woman but she was gone now.  She’d left him, extinguishing the tiny spark of hope that he had kept inside and had gradually allowed to grow over the three years of their acquaintance.  It was his own fault – he knew that.  She’d given him every opportunity to express feelings and he knew that at the slightest indication from him, she would have given him the time he required to man up and try an adult relationship, one with a future.  But he could never bring himself to give her what he knew she needed and so she had married someone else, dashing his stupid hope that she would stay around forever, content with being held at arms length until he was ready to let her in.  It was a ridiculous expectation but one he’d imposed on her anyway, even knowing how it would end.

He had noticed her the second she started working at the hospital.  Every male with a pulse had, be they married or single.  She was beautiful and not in just the regular sense of being visually pleasing.  There was something about her that drew him in, made him want to know more about her.  He hung back though, ignoring her as the other men almost fell over themselves to make her notice them.  More than once, he’d come around a corner to hear some guy proclaim to anyone who would listen that he had found his future wife.  House didn’t care; if she was only doing this job to land herself a good husband then she was boring and just like so many other women he’d observed over the years.

She surprised him though, deflecting the unwanted attention of her suitors gently but decisively.  What was she doing here if she didn’t want a husband?  Being a doctor was never easy and being a female doctor made it exponentially harder.  She didn’t need to do things the hard way, not looking like she did.  Even though he had yet to talk to her, he surreptitiously kept tabs on the hospital gossip on her and knew that several very wealthy young heirs had made advances towards her.  All had been rebuffed.  So he watched, observing as her working life got more difficult and waiting to see how she would react, if there would be a teary breakdown.  Instead, she stoically bore the condescension and then the dismissal of her medical opinion by the male doctors.  Once she made it perfectly clear that she had no interest in marrying or becoming someone’s mistress, the bruised egos froze her out of the boy’s club. 

_He was sitting behind a pulled curtain with an unconscious patient, using the quiet time to rest and hide from the world.  Unfortunately, rounds interrupted his solitude and when the voices got close, he cautiously peeked around the corner of the curtain to see if he was in danger of being disturbed.  Rounds were being led by Covington, an entitled son of a bitch who ranked only slightly higher than pig’s vomit on House’s list of things he wanted to spend any amount of time with._

_“Who’s presenting this case?” Covington demanded, in the arrogant sneer that made House want to punch him in the face every time he spoke, just to see blood dribble down his pointy chin and onto his perfectly starched collar._

_“I am, Sir,” came a female voice and House straightened up, suddenly interested.  She was small enough to be hidden from his view by the much larger men surrounding her._

_“What?” Covington scoffed.  “This patient came in with multiple complaints, too much for a woman.  Give your notes to Doctor Hetherington and he can review them and present them to me later.  We don’t have time to waste sorting you out now.  Next patient.”_

_Covington moved the group on and House watched as she stood there for a second, trying to get herself under control, seething that she had been humiliated and dismissed in front of her colleagues, her opinion and work worth nothing in their eyes because of her gender.  House had also heard rumours that Covington had made a fairly persistent romantic pursuit of her over the last couple of weeks and had been roundly shot down.  But she took a deep breath and then strode purposefully after the group, catching up at the next patient bed._

The nurses weren’t any easier on her, many of them unused to female doctors.  He’d heard the snide remarks they made about her when her back was turned but she was still within earshot, how she thought that she was better than the other women.   Still, she accepted their disdain and continued to do her job, always pleasant to those she dealt with.  House didn’t understand that.  What was the point of turning the other cheek and doing unto others if they just stabbed you in the back anyway?  Why not be upfront and give them a real reason to dislike you?  The end result was the same, only with his way, people were at least scared of him and avoided him.

It took four months for him to speak to her and when he did, he was short and rude.  She had called for a consult on a patient who wasn’t responding to the treatment prescribed him by a more senior doctor.  She had disagreed with the diagnosis and called House for a second opinion.  Obviously, she knew of his reputation and it wasn’t simply a random request.  She wanted to defy a senior doctor and she wanted someone to listen to her and back her up.  House was her best bet.  So he listened, dismissed her theory and then waited to see what she did.  Instead of being discouraged, she bit her lower lip nervously for a second before launching into an impassioned argument for why she was right.  He listened again, pleased to see that she was observant, smart and correct.  He had agreed with her in the first place but had wanted to see how she would react when he blew her off.

_“Fine,” he said shortly and held out his hand for the chart._

_She stopped mid-sentence and looked confused._

_“Fine as in, you agree?”_

_“Sure,” he shrugged carelessly.  “You’re very persuasive.”_

_She frowned, looking perturbed.  “Doctor House, I can assure you that I’ve done my research with this case and tested all my theories thoroughly before presenting to you.  The results support my conclusions and diagnosis and if you’ll just read the…”_

_“Didn’t we already establish that when I said ‘fine’, I agreed with you and your diagnosis?”_

_“Yes, but…”_

_“But you can stop convincing me now.  It’s not necessary and to be honest, I’m not really listening to you anymore.  You can save all that research for when your senior registrar complains to the consultant about you going behind his back with his patient.”_

She looked embarrassed momentarily that he knew of her indiscretion but then tried to cover her trepidation with bravado, a fact that simply amused him.

_“What are you going to say when they see your name on the request sheet?”_

_Once again, he shrugged, unconcerned.  _

_“I’ll tell them that the registrar is an idiot and sparing his delicate ego is no reason for misdiagnosing a patient.  You can get yourself out of whatever trouble you’re in for not following correct protocol.”_

_“I tried to tell them but they wouldn’t listen,” she began indignantly but he cut her off._

_“I’m not going to hold your hand and protect you from the big, bad men.  You knew this would be a tough profession when you got into it, so harden up.  If you don’t want to get into trouble, find other ways around obstacles.  Learn to be smart about it because no one else is going to help you, even if you’re right.  **Especially** if you’re right.  The situation is what it is and appearance and ego play more of a role than you seem to realise.”_

She just blinked at him, so he signed off on her request for tests brusquely and instructed her in the proper treatment for the patient, but she informed him that she had already researched that and it would give the patient a better quality of life.  House asked why she thought he’d care about that and walked away, more intrigued than he had been before they had met.

After that, he requested her on his service and she came willingly.  Once he had determined that she was unlikely to cry if he yelled at her, he made the decision to teach her.  She was smart, smarter than most of the male doctors who were above her and she was good with patients.  House was not good with patients and had no desire to be.  So he sent her out to do the work he didn’t want to and criticised everything she did.  And when she stood up to him or challenged him, his respect for her began to grow.  He could see he was beginning to rub off on her when she began to exercise some of her newfound backbone whenever her colleagues dismissed her opinion.  Over the course of a couple of years, she turned into a competent yet compassionate doctor, one who used her eyes, ears and brain all at the same time.  He taught her how to notice the little things, how to sort the outright lies from the half-truths that patients told and how to put pieces of the puzzle together to make the correct diagnosis.

His friend and fellow doctor, James Wilson, observed their growing relationship and teased House about it, making him grit his teeth and scowl.  This never seemed to intimidate Wilson the way it did others though; his friend was far too used to his grouchy ways to take any of it to heart.  Wilson even went so far as to tease House after he repeatedly denied liking his young subordinate in any way, suggesting that if House wasn’t interested, then maybe he could get to know her better?  Unfortunately, House was unable to hide his gut reaction to that, making Wilson laugh delightedly when apparently his romantic theories were confirmed and assure his friend that he wasn’t in the least bit serious.

_“It’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know,” Wilson offered.  “Society tends to encourage us to take a romantic interest in members of the opposite sex.”_

_“I’m not interested in her that way,” House muttered, irritated that he had let such information slip in front of his friend, the one person who knew him well enough to not be intimidated into being quiet._

_“You could take her out one day, when you’re not working.  The Boat Race is coming up, she could come with us.”_

_“No,” was the short reply and then he was glad that Wilson knew him so well, because he knew not to push the matter further right then._

_House had rowed in the eights before the war and it was yet another thing his injury stopped him from doing.  He didn’t like the idea of showing that to her, of reminding her just how limited he was._

He tried to shake off the memories of years ago.  The walk to the local train station did not take him that long, even though he felt lethargic and down.  Thinking of Wilson always affected his mood, even though his friend was the reason he was here, doing this.  Once at the station, House was able to obtain a ticket into Holland as there was no need to let troops have priority today.  The constant transport of army troops being given preference over travelling civilians was the reason he had resorted to hitching lifts from drivers until he could reach a station where he would be able to get a seat.  It had taken him a week to get this far and if the train ran according to schedule, he’d be in the last known location of Wilson soon. What he’d do then, he had no idea.  His plan kind of ended there.

House had met James Wilson in university.  A couple of classes under him, the younger man had nonetheless made an unexpected impression on Greg House and they had struck up an unlikely friendship.  It was the most lasting relationship of his life, which was pretty pathetic.  He barely saw his parents, his fiancé had left him, the only other woman he was interested in left as well and he had no other friends.  Even though Wilson had gone, they had kept up a correspondence.  The letters were longer and more regular from Wilson’s side, but it said a lot that House even bothered to reply.  He didn’t answer any other letters he received.  So when those letters began to speak of trouble, House, uncharacteristically, worried about another person.

After a couple of false starts, including a broken engagement and a divorce, both due to his wandering eye and equally roving hands, Wilson had finally settled into a marriage to Lisa Cuddy, the head nurse of the hospital where House and Wilson both worked.  Privately, House thought that this marriage could actually work out, even though he predicted to Wilson that he would manage to screw this one up too.  Cuddy was strong enough to handle Wilson.  She basically ran the entire hospital, organising the nurses and dealing with the doctors, so keeping a leash on her husband wouldn’t be too difficult for her.  For his part, Wilson seemed to enjoy having a wife who was clearly in charge of him. This amused House and provided him with many opportunities for mocking his friend, which Wilson tolerated with a shrug.  For her part, Cuddy accepted her husband’s strange friendship and even grew fond of House in some ways, rarely taking offence to the barbs and shrewd observations that he threw her way, or the sly sexual innuendo he would often bring up.  In fact, she seemed to enjoy that and didn’t hesitate to toss back some loaded response of her own.

His life was…predictable and ordered and looking back, he could recognise now that it was the closest to content he’d been since he had returned from the war.  Then it all came crumbling down around him in rapid succession.  In his mind, he had convinced himself that he could maintain the distance between himself and his subordinate, keeping her just close enough to satisfy his need to be near her but not to let her in, not truly.  With the distance, he was in control, he called the shots and she had to adhere to his rules.  Unfortunately, she grew tired of this and made several efforts to progress their relationship outside the professional. He was torn, part of him wanting nothing more than to let her warmth into his barren life, but the rational part of him screamed that it was a mistake.  She didn’t really want him; this was some sort of hero worship gone awry.  That couldn’t last forever and once it was gone, she’d be faced with the stark reality of the broken down man that he was.  Then it would go one of two ways.  Either she would regret being with him and leave, or she’d pity him and stay out of some misguided sense of duty.  Neither option was attractive for him.  It was better to nip it all in the bud and then ignore his feelings.  Feelings would go away eventually and then things could return to how they were when it was safe.

Instead, it all fell apart.  He pushed her away, rejected her as coldly as he could and she took it well, holding her emotions in and going about their work as if nothing had happened.  But things were different and he felt the loss acutely.  She didn’t smile as much and she no longer gazed at him with softness in her eyes.  Still, he told himself, these things needed time.  Life would return to normal soon enough.  So it came as a bit of a surprise when she sadly informed him that her family was pressuring her to settle down and marry a young man who worked for her father’s company.  He could see it all there in her eyes; it was his last chance, all he had to do was ask her not to, to ask her to wait for him until he was ready and she would have defied her family for as long as it took.  Instead, he covered his dismay and jealousy with insults, taunts and cruelty.  Scared of losing her from his life, he turned it into some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, pushing her until she left, handing him a wedding invitation on her way out.  He didn’t go, preferring instead to take a hefty dose of morphine and lose the entire day of her marriage in a black blur.

He carried on at work as if she had never been there, Wilson keeping a careful eye on him.  But House knew that it was for the best and that drugs could soothe this wound, the same way they soothed the pain in his leg.  Wilson worried more than his mother and would make sure that House didn’t go too far.  It was what he did and really, he liked it.  Looking out for House made him feel needed.  It was a friendship that worked for both of them, until Wilson left too.  They needed to move to Germany to help care for Cuddy's ill mother and ailing grandmother, her father unable to cope.

Wilson fretted over House before he left and even Cuddy seemed concerned with how he would function at work without any sort of buffer between him and the rest of the hospital.  House simply scoffed at them because did he look like he was five years old?  He already had parents who worried less about him and he’d prefer if they didn’t transfer their overabundance of parental emotions over on to him, just because they couldn’t have their own kids.  Cuddy had looked hurt and Wilson had glared at him but he just shrugged, unconcerned that his words hit a painful nerve.  Cuddy had then turned away to hide the tears gathering in her eyes, citing work to do as her excuse for leaving the room.

_“Nice,” Wilson huffed irritatedly._

_“It’s not my fault you can’t do your job as a husband and get her pregnant.  I don’t need you to look after me.  Go and take care of someone who needs it.”_

_“We’re leaving, House and you’ll be alone.  You can deflect all you want but we do care.  We’re allowed to be concerned about you.  You’ve been getting worse ever since…”_

_“So leave!” House cut in quickly, knowing exactly what his friend was going to say and not wanting to hear her name or his stupid theories.  “I promise I’ll still manage to dress myself in the mornings and find my way to work without you holding my hand.  There, you are absolved of any false sense of responsibility towards me that you have concocted in your mind.  I really don’t care.  You’re an idiot for even considering going there anyway.  You know normal people are running away from that country, right?”_

He had stormed out of the room then and gone back to his own home, where he had gotten drunk and yet dragged himself into work the next morning in a prideful attempt to show Wilson that he was completely wrong in his assumptions.  House had then avoided him until he left, watching stoically from across the room as Wilson shook hands with everyone on his last day and then turning his back when his friend took a step towards him.  Their only contact since then had been in the form of rambling letters that Wilson would send to him every month.  Out of some sense of obligation, House would write back a short note just to let his friend know that he was still alive and so he would write again the next month.  It hurt to admit to himself that these letters were now a highlight in his life.  So when the letters began to contain phrases like ‘_Jews are being persecuted’,’ people being forced from their homes’, ‘no longer safe’ _and_ ’ have to go somewhere else’_, House actually began to worry.

The last letter he received from Wilson was nearly two years ago.  Cuddy’s grandmother had died and then her mother.  Then the last thing he got was a short note, it was no longer safe for them to stay in Germany and they had run.  All House knew was that they had a way to Amsterdam and a friend there who might help them.  For the past year, he had heard nothing.  He didn’t know whether his only friend was dead or alive and it began to eat at him, to gnaw down deep into most of his waking moments.  He wanted to know what had happened to Wilson, he _needed_ to know.  So when his drinking and drug use got out of hand and the hospital could no longer turn a blind eye, regardless of his brilliance, he decided to find out, even if it killed him.  Fired from his job, disgraced over stealing drugs from the hospital and with absolutely nothing to go home to, House simply collected what money he could and set off to find Wilson.

Now he was sitting in a train, travelling through Belgium and wishing he could stop thinking.  He didn’t want to examine the chain of events that led him here, didn’t want to look back and wonder if things could have been different, for any of it.  Things were what they were and no matter what he wanted, he couldn’t change the past.  His mind was always fuzzy after a hit of morphine and he couldn’t keep his thoughts under control as much as he wanted to, which sunk him into a foul mood.  Not that it was very far to fall for him, any sort of good mood a rare beast indeed.  Pulling up the collar of his coat for the attempt at extra warmth, House leant his head against the cool windowpane and closed his eyes, trying again for the temporary relief of sleep.  His hand kneaded rhythmically at his thigh, clutching and releasing the twisted excuse for muscle in some sort of desperate hope that this time, it would make a difference and take away the pain.  It never did and in the end, it was the rocking motion of the moving train that finally lulled him to sleep, in spite of the pain in his leg.

The noise of the conductor wandering through the train and announcing their imminent arrival at his destination woke him, the angry pounding of his leg rushing back into his consciousness with a relentless force that felt like a tidal wave crashing down on him, only to suck out his breath with its ferocity.  Gritting his teeth, he waited for the initial onslaught to pass before he attempted to stand, holding the backs of the seats for support as he made his way out of the compartment and down the corridor to disembark.  This was pretty much as far as his plan went.  Honestly, he had never foreseen himself making it this far.  Now he was in the city that Wilson had said he was trying to get to, without any idea of exactly where Wilson was heading or even if he made it.

Logic told him that anyone Wilson knew well enough to go to for help in this situation would be someone he knew through work.  Wilson didn’t have much of a life outside the hospital but his spare time was a carnival compared to House’s.  He would head to the major hospital and see if he recognised any names there and make some discreet enquiries.  Well, as discreet as a surly cripple could be, anyway.  As luck would have it, the hospital wasn’t far from the train station so he walked.  About a block away though, he came to a bar and stopped.  Bartenders were as good as nurses with gossip and nurses were unlikely to serve him scotch.  Decision made, House pushed open the heavy wooden door and went inside, his eyes needing to adjust to the sudden lack of light and his lungs breathing in a distinct lack of fresh air.

Limping to the bar, he sat heavily on an available stool and motioned for the bartender.  Ordering a scotch, neat, he sat back and looked around quickly, taking in his surroundings while he waited for his drink.  The bar was a dark place, exactly the kind that House liked, with not too many patrons.  No one was there for social drinking either; these people were serious, which suited House in that it meant less chance of someone trying to make idle and unwanted conversation with him.

As the bartender unceremoniously pushed the drink in front of him, House looked up and caught the younger man’s eye.

“Hey, I’m looking for my friend.”

Already, the bartender was shrugging in disinterest, not wanting to hear anymore or get involved, but House didn’t particularly care.

“He’s a doctor.  He came here looking for help.  Do you know where he might find it?”

The bartender looked House up and down quickly, trying to gauge whether or not he was a threat.  The accent and the scruffy face clearly screamed ‘not a Nazi!’ but the guy must have decided he couldn’t chance it or he genuinely didn’t know.  Either way, he shrugged again and answered, “I don’t know your friend,” before moving down the other end of the bar.  He only returned to fill up House’s glass after the doctor banged on the counter obnoxiously and waved a large note for attention.  From then on, he filled quickly but studiously refused to even make eye contact, let alone talk.

House sat silently, drinking steadily and hoping that some flash of brilliance would come to him or he’d stop thinking entirely.  Unfortunately, inspiration didn’t strike and far too soon, the bartender was at his elbow, roughly urging him up and out.

“Come on,” he insisted, the Dutch accent thick.  “You go find your friend.  Is curfew soon.  Time to go.”

For a moment, House wondered if the bartender was offering him help to find Wilson but that was quickly dashed when he was pushed out into the night and the heavy wooden door banged shut behind him.  He stumbled, reaching out a steadying hand for the wall but managed to miss, lurching forward off balance and somehow scraping the side of his face against stone.  Too drunk to feel it, he instead looked at the blood that came away on his hand when he wiped his face with a detached disinterest before righting himself and staggering off.  With no idea where he was going, he kept walking until two policemen stopped him.

“Halt!” one called.

House ignored him and kept walking down the street.  He could hear the heavy footsteps behind him as they quickened their pace to catch him and the urgent tones of their language as he presumed they asked him to stop.  He didn’t speak Dutch so he wasn’t going to stop.  A hand on his arm jerked him around and he stumbled once more.

“Watch what you’re doing!” he yelled angrily.  “Don’t manhandle the cripple!”

Surprise registered on the cops’ faces but the one who had his arm didn’t let go.  Instead, the other one spoke in halting English.  “Why you out?  Curfew has passed.  You come with us.”

Suddenly, these two guys were the reason that Wilson was missing and House was here.  These guys were working for the Nazis, probably taking people away and doing God knows what to them simply because some German idiot in a shiny uniform told them to.

“Jawohl, mein fuhrer!” House snapped off a Nazi salute and sneered as both sets of cop eyes widened and then narrowed, almost simultaneously.  “Nice to see that you can’t even have an original thought out here,” he jabbed, not caring whether they understood him or not.  “I’m not going anywhere with you!”  Ah, that they understood.

He didn’t register the sound of a door opening or even that a person was speaking.  He only tuned in when he realised that the cops weren’t even looking at him anymore.  Blinking, he followed their line of sight and almost fell over once again.  Her Dutch was slow and she clutched a coat around her small body as she seemed to be pleading with the policemen.  The older cop shook his head and frowned but then a loud noise down the street caught their attention.  With some parting words in a warning tone, the two cops walked briskly off, leaving House staring dumbfounded at Allison Cameron.  He had avoided even thinking her name for two years but now that she was in front of him again, it seemed to be all he was capable of thinking.

With a sigh, she walked down the steps and took his elbow, much gentler than the bartender had done earlier, and guided him up towards the open door.

“Come on, House,” she said softly, her expression blank.  “There’s a curfew.  You have to stay inside until morning.”


	3. Part Three

House continued to stare blankly at Allison Cameron, even as he allowed her to lead him inside her home.  He was not entirely sure that he wasn’t hallucinating.  He had consumed a fair amount of alcohol tonight and he’d often imagined her face in some sort of delusional state where he hadn’t screwed things up beyond redemption, where he still had a chance.  But that always disappeared when he sobered up and he had never felt her touch before, her hand wrapped around his wrist as she steadied and guided him.

“What are you doing here?”

Her voice startled him out of his drunken musings and he stared at her uncomprehendingly.  She had never sounded so pissed off at him when he had these little hallucinations.  She was usually happy to see him and often ended up taking off both their clothes in a fit of passion.  That didn’t seem likely right now.

“House.  How did you get here?  And why were you trying to get yourself arrested?”

He blinked in response, still waiting for the happy Cameron of his dreams to reappear.

Seeing that she wasn’t getting the answers she was hoping for, Cameron turned away from him, to the small sink in the corner of the room.  Blinking again, House took in his surroundings blearily.  He was seated at a table in a very small kitchen and he could see through to a living area and some stairs leading upwards.  Anything more would require movement of his neck that seemed beyond him at the moment.  He felt that there was a very real danger that his head could fall off if he shifted too much.  He had been fine on the street while he was moving but now he had stopped, everything seemed to catch up to him in a wave and dump on him.  Suddenly, all he wanted was to sleep.

“What did you do to your face?”

Was he imagining it or had her voice softened?  Still not sure if this was real or not, he turned to look at her, wanting to take her in.  She was bending down so her face was close to his and he could see the compassion in her eyes.  Now _that_ he recognised.  That was the Allison Cameron he knew.

He didn’t flinch when she brought the cold, wet cloth to his face, his drink-addled mind not really registering much other than her words.

“You’re bleeding.”

Then she sighed and continued silently cleaning the blood, both fresh and crusted, off the side of his face while he sat there, staring at her.

“You smell too.  What have you been doing, sleeping in a barn for the past week?  When did you last bathe?”  She sighed again.  “If you’re not going to talk to me, can you at least indicate if you’re hurt anywhere else?  Because if you don’t, I’m going to strip you and check for myself and then I’m going to give you a bath because you stink.”

“Okay.”

Surprise registered on Cameron’s face at his one word but when nothing more was forthcoming, she shrugged and placed her arms under his, helping him into a standing position before leading him very slowly to the small area where a tub was hidden behind a curtain.  His last coherent thought of the night, as she began to unbutton his shirt was _‘now _this_ is more like it_.’

 ***

When he awoke, House was lying on his back in a bed in an unfamiliar room.  And he appeared to be naked.  He felt like complete and utter crap and the first thing he did was lift his head to look for his coat.  He had some stuff in his coat that would make him feel less like someone had taken a bat to his temples repeatedly the night before but that appeared to be wherever his clothes were.  He did spy a small pile of folded clothes on a chair in the corner but then the effort of holding his head up was too much and he flopped back down on the bed, regretting the movement the next instant as pain reverberated around his skull like he had a battering ram in there.

Perhaps lying still for the next year or so would be the best course of action.  That seemed like a fine plan until the pain in his leg began to drown out the pounding in his head and he knew he had to find some pills.  With an effort and several strong curse words, he managed to sit himself up and swing his legs over the edge of the bed.  He sat there for a minute, his hand dragging long, deep strokes along the length of his mangled thigh, trying fruitlessly to relieve the ever-present ache, even if only for a few seconds.  Once he had steeled himself against the stab he knew would come when he first put weight on his leg, he stood and made his way painfully over to the chair in the corner, picking up the clothes there.  He remembered now, how he had been taken inside, cleaned up and led to bed.  He thought it was Allison Cameron who had done all that for him but he couldn’t be sure if that was just his very drunken mind playing tricks on him.  Why would she be in Holland?  More likely it was some random and kind-hearted Dutch person who had dragged his sorry arse into their home, in which case, he’d be leaving as soon as he could collect his coat and thus his medication.  Whoever owned these clothes was about half a foot smaller than him so House now felt ridiculous, as well as hung over.

It was a small house so he had no trouble finding his way down to the kitchen.  To his surprise, Allison Cameron stood at the stove, cooking something.  Her back was to him but he recognised her instantly, having spent several years staring at her from behind.  Then she turned around, a pot in her hand and indicated the table.

“Please sit.  I heard you get up so I made you something to eat.”

“Where’s my coat?”

Three years and that was the first thing out of his mouth, well, the first thing he remembered anyway.  He probably said something equally as insulting or stupid last night but that didn’t count because he was drunk.  Right now, the only thing he was concerned about was getting some relief for his leg.

Wordlessly, Cameron pointed to a hook behind the door and he was there in an instant, uncaring of her eyes on him as he rummaged through the pocket and found the pill bottle he was after, shaking some tablets into his hand and then swallowing them down without pause.  Still without comment, she handed him a warm cup of tea, which he gulped down, heedless of the slight burn in his throat from the liquid.  Then he sat down at the table and waited for both the medication to kick in and his food to be put in front of him.

Cameron placed a steaming bowl of porridge before him and then sat in the chair opposite.  With a grunt, he began eating, stopping after a minute to ask if she was going to have anything.

“I’m not hungry.  Would you like some more tea?  I’m going to make myself a cup.”

House nodded and watched as she got up and went through the motions of brewing more tea for the two of them.  It seemed that she wasn’t planning on being forthcoming with the information he required so he was going to have to come out and bluntly ask her.  She had never been able to lie or talk around an answer he wanted from her when he stared her down.  He studied her closely while her attention was on her task.  She hadn’t changed much, although she definitely looked a little older.  Tired.  He doubted the past couple of years had been easy for her.  She seemed…quieter, a bit beaten down and he hoped like hell that it was the circumstances of the war and not a literal problem with her husband.  He never saw her as the type of woman to accept that treatment, but he also knew how stubborn and loyal she could be.

“Why Holland?” he asked suddenly, breaking the awkward quiet that had descended in the kitchen.

“This is where…my husband’s family was.”  She didn’t turn around to face him when she answered.

“Was?  Where are they now?  And where is that strapping young groom of yours?”

She did turn to face him then and at first he thought it was anger at the derision in his voice when he enquired after her husband, but it turned out to be disappointment.

“You didn’t know?  He’s dead.  They’re all dead.”  Her voice was even, no cracks of emotion and that, in turn, surprised him.  The Allison Cameron he knew would have had tears in her eyes when she imparted that information.

“How could I have known?” he asked impatiently, scooping out the last of the porridge from his bowl.  “How long?  Why didn’t you come home after?”

“He signed up to fight straight away, as soon as we arrived here,” she relayed softly.  “I got word a month later that he had been killed in action.  I stayed because I had nothing to go back for and I could help people here.”

He ignored the brief sting at her choice of language about having nothing to come home for, if she was going to try and hurt him with her words, she would have to do better than that.  Instead, he latched onto something she had said and pushed, wanting an answer.  He had a suspicion and now she was going to admit it to him.

“Why would you have thought that I knew about your husband dying?” he persisted.

“I didn’t,” she argued.  “There’s no reason you would have known that.”  But her eyes wouldn’t meet his for more than a split second and he was sure he was right.

“You _hoped_ I knew.”  He was well aware he was being cruel but he didn’t stop.  “When you saw me last night, you _hoped_ that I had heard about your husband and had come to find you, to beg you to come home with me.”

“No!” she denied but the bright red flush on her cheeks gave her away.  “You made it perfectly clear not to expect anything of the sort from you when I left the hospital.”

“And yet you continue to hope.  To dream.  You should have thought of that before you ran away.”

Something about that made her snap and she stood up, her chair scraping an angry path against the floorboards in her haste to get away from him.  She took a step backwards but then stopped, obviously trying to get control of her emotions before she spoke.  House watched, fascinated by her pain and almost entranced by her beauty.

“I didn’t _run away_.  I would have stayed, if you had given me a reason.  Anything.  But you gave me _nothing_.  And then you practically pushed me out of the door yourself!  I’m not going to apologise for anything I did.”

“What could I have given you?  Adorable little children, a house in the country and supper with your parents every Tuesday?  Wake up Cameron, that was never going to happen.”

“I never asked for any of that!” she cried, exasperated.  “I never expected that from you.  All I wanted was an indication that you felt the same way about me that I did you and it would have been enough.  I would have told my father no.  I wouldn’t have gotten married or left.  I would have stayed and been happy with whatever you were comfortable with.”

He sneered at her.  “You say that now and you probably even mean it, but it wouldn’t last.  You’d want more, want what your friends have and then you’d blame me for denying you.  So don’t blame me now.”

“You have no idea what I want,” she spat at him bitterly.  “All you ever thought about was yourself and your own misery.  And all I ever wanted was you.  I tried to meet you halfway but you wouldn’t even do that.  Wouldn’t even budge.  You made it perfectly clear that you didn’t want me.  And yet you act like you expected me to just wait around and be content with whatever scraps of affection you deigned to throw at me.  That’s not fair to expect so much of me.  But you did and then you punished me for failing to live up to your standards.  That’s not _fair_.”

All the fight seemed to drain out of her after that little rant and she looked almost embarrassed for a second before eyeing him defiantly.

“I have to change clothes.  I have work.  Excuse me.”

House watched her leaving, trying to hold on to her dignity as she mounted the stairs, leaving him sitting alone in the kitchen.  He turned her words over in his mind as he sat, angry with her and himself.  There was a lot of truth in what she’d just said and he hated that she could see through him like that.  He did hold her to higher standards than other people and expect more out of her.  He expected everyone to leave him and while he had always maintained that she would too, deep down, he had hoped that he would be wrong, that she would be different to everyone else.  And when she failed to live up to that unrealistic expectation, after he had done everything in his power to push her away and make sure that she thought he didn’t want her, he punished her, with harsh words and a complete emotional shutdown.  It wasn’t fair, at all, but it was what he did.  Somehow, he had expected her to accept that from him, the way she had accepted so many of his other shortcomings.

What wasn’t true was her assertion that he never thought about her and only about himself.  Protecting himself was a priority but he also worried about hurting her.  And even though she was adamant that she didn’t want the life that normal people aspired to and probably believed it when she said so, he knew that things could change.  If they did – when he was no longer enough for her - she’d be stuck with a much older husband, no children, few friends and a miserable life.  He didn’t want that for her.  He didn’t want to do that _to_ her.  Of course, perversely, he didn’t want to see her happy with someone else, so it was better for everyone if she left.  So he punished her for that too.

Right now, he was confused.  Angry, hurting, impatient – none of that had changed.  But he was also slightly less miserable than he had been yesterday.  He still had no idea where Wilson was, his leg still hurt, he had no job, but now he had her back in his life.  She was still frustrating, irritating and overly caring, that much was clear in the fifteen minutes they had spent in each other’s company and a large part of that time had been spent yelling.  But she was _here_, right in front of him, in touching distance if he wanted to try.  There were no rainbows or pixies or unicorns in his world, there never would be, but she made it a little less bleak.  All he needed to do was make an effort, take a tiny step in her direction.  He knew her well enough to be sure that she would recognise what he was trying to do and help him along.  If she still wanted anything to do with him beyond polite acquaintance, that was.  And if she didn’t, then he was no worse off than before.

Just as he was contemplating whether making nice with her was worth the effort of climbing the stairs, he heard her making her way down, so he settled back in his chair, stretching his legs out to appear unruffled by their earlier fight.  He wasn’t going to give her the upper hand by looking contrite or even bothered.  If he did, she might realise that she wasn’t as far off the mark with some of her hopes as he had pretended.  Oh, he was never going to come charging over the Channel on a white horse to jump over a dyke and scoop her up once he heard her husband was dead, but he wouldn’t have been completely unaffected.  The reality was he had no idea what he would have done if he’d known – probably nothing, to be completely honest – but he had definitely imagined her husband dying a quick death more than once.  The problem was, in all those little daydreams, she had come home and asked for her job back, thus removing the burden of first action from him.  And he didn’t want her to have any inkling that he had entertained such thoughts, like a pathetic, lovesick girl.  He’d rather she thought him a cold bastard than a pining fool.

“I have work,” she informed him quietly, her tone betraying no hint of anything other than flat disinterest.”

“Where?” he wanted to know.  “Don’t tell me you’re wasting the years I spent training you.”

“I’m using my medical training appropriately,” she dryly assured him.  “The hospital here is short on doctors so I had no problems finding a job.”

“Good,” he replied shortly.  She was an excellent doctor and he had invested plenty of time in her.  Emotional entanglements aside, it had rankled him that she would be urged by her family to give up medicine and become a wife.  She was so much more than that.  _He_ deserved better from her.  Then he casually tossed out, “I’ll come with you.  See the hospital.”

Cameron eyed him a little suspiciously.  “It’s just a hospital.  Nowhere near as good as the one we worked at in London.

“I’m…looking for someone,” he confessed.  “I just want to see if I can find some information and figured a hospital would be a good place to start.”

“Who are you looking for?  Maybe I can help.”

”Just a guy I knew,” he replied vaguely, not wanting to give away his real reason for wanting to follow her to work.  He also decided against mentioning Wilson and that situation for now.  It would only cause her to get upset and there was nothing she could do about it.  Maybe he’d tell her later, if he felt like it.

She considered his request and obviously not seeing any harm in it, nodded her agreement.

“I washed your clothes last night because they smelled so bad. They aren’t quite dry yet but if you want to wait a couple of hours, they’ll be fine and will fit you a bit better.” 

Remembering the ridiculously short pants he was wearing, House gave a single nod.  He could wait a few hours.

Opening a drawer, she withdrew a piece of paper and a pencil and sketched him a rough map, drawing two X’s on it, one for the hospital and one for her home.

“I’m on the second floor.  Reception will show you.”

House shrugged, keeping nonchalant, and held out his hand for the paper.  Then there was another awkward pause as Cameron seemed to contemplate whether or not to say something.  In the end, she decided against it, gathering her coat and folding it over her arm.  Her innate politeness won out over her reservations though and she turned before she left the room.

“Make yourself comfortable, House.  You’re welcome to stay as long as you need to.”

Then she was gone, leaving him alone in her home, with the accoutrements of her life just calling out for him to poke through and see what she was hiding.  Everyone was hiding _something_ from the outside world and she would be no different.  All he had to do was discover it and then he would have the upper hand in their strange little relationship.  Whatever happened from now on, it was important that he held the cards, that he didn’t allow her to assume control.

Getting up from the table, he dumped his breakfast dishes in the sink and then went to check on his clothes.  They smelled a lot better than they had yesterday, even though he hadn’t really paid attention to how he smelt while he was travelling.  If it helped people avoid him, then that was good.  Cameron was correct and they would be ready to wear in a couple of hours.  Wearing the clothes while he was equally as dirty had been fine but the idea of redressing in dirty clothes while he was clean made his skin crawl in distaste.  And then he stopped, not having really processed what happened last night yet, busy dealing with a hangover and the appearance in his life of a woman he thought had left him behind forever.  He was clean.  He hadn’t been clean when he got here last night.  He vaguely recalled Cameron unbuttoning his shirt and taking off his pants but he had put that down to drunken fantasy.  He definitely hadn’t possessed the coordination to bathe himself last night so it appeared that Cameron had done it for him.  It would explain why he woke naked in a strange bed.  And it meant that she had seen his leg.  With a frown, he contemplated that revelation, not sure how he felt about it.  However, it was too late to do anything to change that so he pushed it from his mind.

He had a couple of hours to kill before he could go to the hospital.  Maybe someone around there would be able to give him a lead on Wilson.  It was as good a place as any to start.  But what he’d told Cameron was only part of the truth.  The real reason he wanted to go to the hospital was because he hadn’t had a good source of drugs since he’d left England and he was running low.  If he played Cameron correctly, she should get him into places where he could easily pocket some good stuff and yet be none the wiser for it.  He should still have some semblance of a reputation over here.  Information travelled slowly, especially during the war.  All he needed was an in and then he could take it from there.  Cameron was that in.  Hopefully her hero worship of him as a doctor would override her better judgement of him as a man.  He was relying on her trusting nature.

A quick perusal of her home didn’t reveal anything immediately interesting.  She was neat and ordered and pathetically boring.  Clothes hung limply in the wardrobe; everything else was neatly folded and put away in the appropriate drawer.  There was no clutter, no knick-knacks, no evidence of any sort of life really.  It appeared that she went to work and then came home.  There was a neatly ordered bookshelf, probably what she did for fun, and a wireless set tucked away in the corner of her small living room.  He could actually picture her, sitting by the set, listening carefully for any news of the war effort or maybe reading a book, the familiar furrow appearing over her brow when she was concentrating.

Almost physically shaking himself out of his uncharacteristically sappy thoughts, he decided to look a little deeper.  There had to be more to her life than this…shell.  The woman he knew back in England had a hidden fire burning inside, a determination to be the best she could be, that led her to study medicine at university and persevere in a male-dominated field.  The woman who lived in this home seemed empty.  There had to be more.

He refused to acknowledge any sort of hope that she had kept some small memento of him, that he was actively searching for evidence that she had thought of him like he had of her after she’d left.  Ideally, she would have been fantasising about him while she was with her husband, wishing it was House’s hands on her body rather than the idiot she married, but at this point, he’d take anything he could find.  He wouldn’t find any evidence if she had been thinking of him in bed, just like she’d never know that after she left, he sought out prostitutes with a specific body type and hair colour.  No one would ever know that.

An hour later, House had suspicions that didn’t sit well with him and he almost wished he had left well enough alone.  That was futile though because he never could leave anything alone, regardless of the possible outcomes.  He had to know, to find the truth.  Now he had another puzzle to solve.  She hid it well, but it appeared that Cameron had someone male -other than him- spending regular time at her house.  Did she have a lover?  Her marriage had only lasted a month so she must be lonely.  Perhaps she had someone come by simply to fulfil her physical needs, hence the careful lack of evidence.  House fought the irrational jealousy that threatened to bubble over at that idea.  If that was all she was looking for, maybe he could offer to help out?  Maybe bedding her would let him get her out of his head?

He would have to investigate further before he could be sure though.  A pair of male socks, folded at the bottom of clean laundry he found, two cups sitting in the cupboard with their handles facing out, rather than in like the rest of the cups and a worn shaving brush in her rubbish were far from conclusive evidence.  Just enough to whet his curiosity and ensure that he paid attention to her interactions when he met her at the hospital soon.  His clothes were practically dry, so he changed, not even bothering to shake out any wrinkles before he put the clothes on.  At least he didn’t smell anymore.

A quick perusal of the map and he left for the hospital, leaning heavily on his cane as he walked along the uneven footpath.  The air was chilly and the sky heavy and grey so he hoped he made it indoors before the rain came.  Dark, pregnant clouds hung threateningly overhead and he hadn’t made it to the corner of Cameron’s street before the first thick drop of rain landed on the peak of his woollen cap.  Not pausing in his stride, he merely used his free hand to wrap his black pea coat firmly around his body in a practised motion and continued on his way.  By the time he made it to the hospital, it didn’t matter that he had waited for his clothes to dry before setting out.  The building itself was boring, square, grey and austere.  At least this city hadn’t been levelled like Rotterdam, although maybe it might have been kinder for the architecture if someone bombed this particular building into oblivion.  Shaking the excess moisture off his coat, he went inside, the interior no more welcoming than the exterior.  The entire place seemed to be wards and corridors, with the occasional open area with chairs for waiting.  He headed for the stairs and painfully made his way up to the second floor.  Gritting his teeth, he took each stair slowly, cursing the fact that this was necessary for his plan.  There was a lift but he needed to be as tense as possible.  Looking bedraggled probably wouldn’t hurt either.  He pushed open the door to the second floor and made his way to the reception.

As he stood before the nurse’s desk, he suddenly realised that he didn’t know what name Cameron was using.  He hadn’t even wanted to know the idiot’s name, throwing the wedding invitation she’d given him in the rubbish without even opening it and refusing to even discuss her with anyone who tried in the ensuing weeks.  Just as he was preparing to simply stand in the middle of the corridor and shout until she appeared, she walked out of a room about ten feet in front of him.

“House!”  She seemed pleased to see him but then wiped the expression from her face as she stepped closer.  It was soon replaced with a frown of worry.  “Are you okay?”

“My leg,” he explained, aware that there was sweat beading on his forehead from climbing the stairs and adding some sad eyes to go with it.  “I’ve been on it a lot lately and walking here was a bit much.  I don’t suppose you can give me something to relieve the pain, please?”

“Of course,” she answered immediately, her compassion practically pouring off her in waves.  “Come and sit down.”

She led him into a small room that, he was pleased to note, housed a drug supply.  He paid careful attention as she selected a key from the set she kept in the pocket of her white coat and opened the locked cabinet where the narcotics were kept, scanning the shelf.  He stood up and limped over next to her, standing close beside her, hoping to make her flustered.  It had always worked in the past.  Sure enough, she seemed nervous at his close proximity and turned her body slightly away, trying to put some distance between them.  This worked perfectly for House as it blocked her view of his far hand.  He leaned closer to her, taking in her scent and feeling like he could almost hear her heartbeat accelerate to match his.

“Can I get some Dilaudid?  That works well when my leg is this bad,” he asked softly, enjoying the slight flush of red he could see appear on the skin at the base of her neck.

She nodded wordlessly and turned even further to reach the hydromorphone, allowing him the time to quickly slip two vials of morphine and what he thought was a vial of pethidine into his coat pocket.  It wasn’t much but Cameron was right there.  He could come back for more later, once he’d lifted her key.

She quickly prepared a prescription for him, writing it all out correctly and handing him a pathetically small bottle of pills.  Still, he accepted them, trying for grateful.

“Thanks.  I hated to ask.”  Quickly, he shook out a pill and swallowed it, needing the relief after what he’d had to do.

“Not at all,” she replied politely and then they were saved from having to discuss the situation further by the arrival of another doctor, a young blonde man who seemed very pleased to run into Cameron.

“Allison!” he exclaimed happily.  “I’ve missed you this morning.  Lovely to see you.”

His English was accented but at least it was English and House could understand him.

“Hello, Robert,” Cameron answered quietly.  “I’ve been busy.”

“Of course,” was the smooth reply before he turned to House expectantly.  “Doctor Robert Chase.”

House just stared at the outstretched hand in distaste and tightened his grip on his cane.  Cameron stepped in before the silence could become even more awkward than it was.

“This is Doctor Greg House.  I worked for him back in England.”

“I’ve read of your work.  It’s an honour,” Chase smiled tightly as House simply continued to stare at him, the two men sizing each other up instantly.  House didn’t like this guy.  Too good looking, too smooth, too young and probably too rich.  He was everything House had hated in the rich heirs who went into medicine just for something to do.  And he very clearly had plans for Cameron.

“Allison, when you’re done with Doctor House, would you have time for me later?” Chase requested, when it became painfully obvious that House wasn’t going to be drawn into a conversation with him.

“Oh,” said Cameron and House thought he could detect an underlying hint of anxiety, which made him smirk.  “Doctor House and I have plans for the rest of the day.”

House decided to help her out, stepping even closer to her and facing Chase as a unit.

“Sorry, Chase, but we have plenty of old times to catch up on.  You know how it is.”  He sneered at the blonde doctor, somehow managing to make it both lecherous towards Cameron and dismissive of Chase at the same time, which the young man clearly found irritating.  Good.

“Not a problem.  I’ll simply see you after Doctor House has gone.”

“Hard to tell when that will be.  Travel plans aren’t firm.  There’s a war on, you know.”

“Yes,” Chase replied, his eyes fixed on Cameron, “I am aware of that, thank you.  Good day, Doctor House.  Allison.”

“Friend of yours?” House asked disdainfully, as his eyes tracked Chase down the corridor and hoped that this wasn’t the guy whose socks were in her laundry.  Surely she couldn’t have taste that bad?  He didn’t look like he could fulfil anyone’s needs, not unless their needs were limited solely to shopping.  Cameron needed more of a man than that pretty boy.

“He’s fine,” she replied shortly and House looked over at her sharply, only to see her attention was elsewhere.  Following her line of sight, he saw two men leaning against a far wall, trying to look casual and failing miserably.

“More friends?”

This startled her.

“What?  No, I don’t know them.  Look, House, I’m busy so can you find your own way around?  You can ask whoever you want about your friend.”

“Sure,” he agreed easily, letting her think that he pathetic attempt at throwing him off the scent was successful.  “I’ll see you later.”

”I get off in three hours,” she mumbled distractedly and then went over to the nurse’s station, her eyes never leaving the men over by the wall, even as she accepted a file from the nurse behind the desk.

House simply slunk back until he was hidden from her view but able to keep her in his sight.  Sure enough, he didn’t have to wait long for Cameron to walk past the men and then go into an empty room by herself.  A long moment passed, then the two men followed her and closed the door behind them.  When he sidled up to the door, House could look in through the small glass panel if he was careful not to show himself.

He couldn’t hear what they were saying but he doubted it would matter.  Cameron was agitated, her hands flying nervously around as she tried to make a point, her eyes continuously flicking over to the door.  The two men didn’t look much more comfortable, but one was shaking his head and arguing with Cameron.  Then the man handed Cameron something small, flat and rectangular, which she immediately slipped into her coat pocket, out of sight.  In response, she wrote something down on a notepad and then tore the paper off, handing it to the man who hadn’t been saying anything.  He looked grateful and grasped Cameron’s hand between both of his, shaking until the other man eased him away and they turned towards the door.  At this point, House limped quickly away, not wanting to be seen.  Somehow, he doubted that Cameron was sleeping with either of those two guys, so what did they want and why was it so secretive?

He peered around the corner he had retreated behind just in time to see the two men sharply change direction and hurry off.  Their new path took them directly past him but they didn’t even notice him, not paying attention to anything other than the exit.  They passed close enough for House to see the tension on their faces.  Interested, he wandered casually around the corner, keen to see what or who had spooked Cameron’s mysterious visitors.  The answer became instantly obvious the second he stepped out into view.

Nazis.

Chase was walking past the nurse’s station with five men dressed in Nazi uniforms in tow.  House’s lip curled in disgust but even he wasn’t stupid enough to say anything or draw attention to himself.  Not while he was relatively sober, anyway.  Chase continued to pass through, deep in conversation with his military mates.  The company only reinforced House’s initial impression of the young doctor.  Out of the corner of his eye, House saw Cameron emerge from the room and then hurry in the opposite direction to Chase, her attention seemingly focused on the file in her hands.  Interesting.

House had plenty to ponder now.  Deciding to leave his questions for another day, he headed back to Cameron’s place, his mind consumed with another puzzle.  By the time he reached her home, he had come to a conclusion, one that he might not be able to prove but fit what he knew about Cameron and what he’d seen.  Before he entered her front door though, he stood back and stared at the building, mentally taking in dimensions and sizes and making rough measurements in his mind.  Her home was one of many in a row, all similar except for the number on the door.  Two stories and narrow, there wasn’t much room to make your place different from your neighbours.  Then he went inside and upstairs, into her spare bedroom.

She had a two bedroom flat, a very small one but when he had been looking around before, he’d noticed that her second room seemed extra tiny but had put that down to an architectural quirk.  Now, he thought differently.  Scrutinising the room and mentally comparing it to what he had seen outside, House smirked in satisfaction.  Sneaky, she might be, but he was smarter.  Then the sound of the front door closing caught his attention and he headed downstairs, flushed with the satisfaction of knowing that he was right.

“Home so soon?” he asked cheekily, leaning casually against the doorframe in the kitchen.

She jumped, turning around in shock.  “House!  I thought you were at the hospital.”

“I was,” he acknowledged, wandering into the kitchen, noting that her eyes flicked to her bag that was lying on the table.  “Then I saw something that made me feel a bit ill.  Chase.  Snuggling up to Nazis.”

“Chase isn’t so bad,” she defended.  “He’s just doing what he needs to survive.  We all are.  It’s not easy.  The Germans are in control and if he doesn’t go along with them, we’re all worse off.”

“Right,” House sneered, “He’s practically a national hero.  I’m sure someone will pin a medal on him soon.  What about you, Cameron?  What do you need to do to survive?”  He turned his gaze on her, pinning her down, practically daring her to lie to him.

“I don’t do anything.”

“Sure.”  He was quick, quicker than she expected.  His casual steps into the room had disguised his purpose, which was to get closer to the kitchen table than she was.  His long arm shot out and, before she could protest, he had her bag in his hand.  A quick shuffle through the contents and he came up with the items he had seen her accept from the men at the hospital, adding another piece to his puzzle.

“Ration cards.”  He held them up for illustration.  “You’re one woman, Cameron.  You don’t look like you eat.  What do you need extra ration cards for?”

“They’re for friends,” she said, defeat evident in her voice.  She was well acquainted with him like this, when he thought he had figured something out and wanted to have someone admit that he was right.  She’d seen him confront patients who had lied to him many times.

“And where are your friends?  Are you hiding something?  Or someone?  Why does someone who has done nothing wrong hurry away from Nazis, trying to pretend they don’t see them?  And I know you; you would only do something wrong if you thought you were helping another person.  How stupid are you?  Don’t you know what will happen if you get caught?”

Under the barrage of questions, she bristled, defiance replacing the defeat in her voice. 

“Some things are worth taking a risk for, House.  Some _people_ are worth taking a risk for.  What is happening, what the Nazis are doing to innocent people, is **wrong**!  I can’t stop it but I’ll do what I can in my own way.  You said before that you were here looking for a friend.  So you know that people disappear and never return.  How can you expect me to sit by and just watch it happen?”

“I expect you to be _smart_ and exhibit some sort of self-preservation,” he snapped back.  “Not sneaking around like some sort of incompetent spy.  There are plenty of fools willing to die a hero.  Let them do it.”

She studied him for a second.  “You want to know why I did it?  Come on.”

With that, she brushed past him on her way to the stairs, not waiting for him to follow her.  House watched her go but then his curiosity overcame his irritation and he went upstairs after her.  He was much slower than she was and by the time he got there, she had already moved furniture away from the bookcase on the wall and was fiddling with something.  With a click, the bookcase separated from the wall, swinging open like a door to reveal a tiny room behind it, more of an enclave really.  There was a mattress and some blankets and a lamp gave off a faint glow in the light of the room.  But House noticed none of that.

Sitting on the mattress, blinking at the sudden onslaught of daylight over the darkness, was James Wilson and his wife, Lisa Cuddy.


	4. Part Four

 Instead of greeting his friend or even letting on that he was pleased to see Wilson alive, House turned on Cameron.

“You’ve had me here for an entire day and you didn’t think to tell me that you also had my best friend stuck in a cupboard upstairs?  What the hell did you think I was doing in this damn country?  Picking tulips?”

“How was I supposed to know what you were doing here?  When I rescued you from the police last night, you were too drunk to form a complete sentence.  I was planning on telling you later tonight, when I was sure it was safe.”

“Safe from what?  From me?”  House looked scornful.  “You think I’m a Nazi spy?  Did you discuss the possibility with your boyfriend?  Get him to ask his Nazis mates if I’m working for them?”

“Chase isn’t my boyfriend,” Cameron replied automatically.  “And I’m not going to apologise to you.  I haven’t seen or heard from you in several years.  Then you suddenly show up on my doorstep.  My concern was protecting Wilson and Cuddy, not your feelings.”

Neither of them had noticed Wilson, who had gotten to his feet and stepped forward, effectively stopping the argument for now.

“House,” he said quietly, holding out his hand, “it’s so good to see you.  I was beginning to think that I’d never see you again.”

“Same.”  House accepted the proffered hand easily, shaking briefly and even letting himself be drawn into a quick but tight hug by his friend.

“Hi, House,” Cuddy smiled, coming out of the tiny room to stand beside her husband.  On closer inspection, they both looked gaunt and worried, lines etched into their faces that House hadn’t seen before.  But they were alive and safe, no matter what had driven them here.  Why the hell were they here anyway?  What would possess Wilson to run to Cameron?  And why would she risk her life to protect two people she didn’t know very well?  As far as he was aware, Wilson and Cameron didn’t have any sort of special relationship and Cuddy and Cameron barely tolerated each other.  Maybe he was well off base with Wilson and Cameron?  Wilson had a well-founded reputation with women and an ability to charm them without appearing distasteful.  He also liked to comfort distressed women and House had definitely left Cameron distressed.  It would be completely in character of Wilson to go to her home and offer her a shoulder to cry on, be sympathetic and then let that comfort turn into something more.  House had seen it happen plenty of times, although not while his friend was married to Cuddy.  But a ring hadn’t stopped Wilson before.  House found a bad taste rise into his mouth at the thought of Wilson and Cameron together.

‘What are you doing here?” he asked roughly, trying to push away the images of Wilson’s hands on Cameron’s body that rose unbidden into his mind.

“Hiding.  Allison is trying to get us some forged papers so we can get back to England but it’s hard.  It’s not safe for us to be anywhere else so we have to stay here.”

“But why _here_?” House persisted, wanting to know, wanting to hear what explanation Wilson would give.  His friend looked at him almost pityingly.

“After Allison left England, we kept in touch, writing letters to each other.  And when we couldn’t stay in Germany any longer, I asked her if we could come here because I doubted we could make it to England.  She was the only safe place I could think of and we owe her our lives.”

“You don’t owe me anything,” Cameron assured him, smiling wanly and making House scowl internally at the look they exchanged.  “But I do need to get back to work before they miss me.  I only came home to hide the extra ration cards.  I’ll leave you to catch up and see you in a few hours.  Please show House what to do in case someone drops by unexpectedly.”

“Will do,” Wilson assured her and, with one last look, Cameron disappeared down the stairs, leaving House to face Wilson and Cuddy alone.

“Come away from the window,” Cuddy said suddenly, gesturing him to come over to the secret room Cameron had exposed behind the bookcase.  “We don’t want anyone to see us and wonder why we are in Allison’s house.”

They moved over to the corner of the room, Wilson pulling over a chair so that House could sit down.  Then he quickly demonstrated how to close the door and move the bookcase into place if they were disturbed, effectively hiding their presence from the casual observer.  There shouldn’t be any interruptions but it was best to be prepared.  At least House had a valid reason to be here and would help to allay any suspicions by busybody neighbours.  In times like these, informers were everywhere and plenty of people looked to make life just a little bit easier for themselves and their family by turning in Jews or resistance members.

“Is that what she is?” House asked.  “The Dutch Resistance?”

“She works with them,” Wilson admitted.  “When we first arrived here, she didn’t know what to do or how to best hide us.  She knew some of the doctors at the hospital helped the Resistance occasionally and she managed to make contact with some people that way.  A couple of guys did the room for her at night, before the curfew was so strict, and that’s who she is getting papers through for us.  I know sometimes people come here when they need medical help and can’t risk going to the hospital and I’m pretty sure she takes drugs from the hospital to pass on.  It’s incredibly risky but she has never once asked us to leave or seemed to resent what she has to do to keep us alive.  We really do owe her everything.”

“I’m sure she’s a regular angel sent from heaven.  You lot do believe in angels, don’t you?  That’s not too Christian for you?”

Wilson ignored House’s sarcastic jibe at both his religion and Cameron’s personality, preferring to focus on the seriousness of their situation.

“She doesn’t deserve for you to give her a hard time about this, House.  I don’t know what we would have done if she’d turned us away.  It wasn’t safe in Germany.  Lisa’s father was taken from his shop, in broad daylight.  Jews were just being herded up like sheep and put into trucks and taken away.  We don’t know what happened to him or where he went but the stories are horrible.  We narrowly missed being caught in that round up and we ran that night.  This was the only safe place we thought we could make.”

House knew that both Cuddy’s mother and grandmother had died just before the war started and it was highly likely that her father was now dead too.  He could see the pain on her face as she remembered watching Nazis throw her elderly father into a truck loaded with their friends and neighbours, treated more like animals than human beings.

“I’m going to make some coffee,” Cuddy stated, escaping from House’s gaze down to the kitchen.

“Have you been here the whole time, for over a year?” House asked, wanting to get away from the subject of Cameron’s impending sainthood because he knew that would lead to a ‘discussion’ about what an idiot he was to let her leave in the first place.  And he wasn’t anywhere near high or drunk enough to sit through that.

“Yes,” Wilson admitted, “and it’s been hard, particularly on Lisa.  She’s worried about her father and we’re stuck here.”

“She’s knows he’s probably dead though, right?” House asked incredulously.  Common sense told him that an old man wouldn’t last long wherever he was taken, not with the various hushed whispers about what the Nazis did to the Jews they took that were flying around.  There was no point in sitting in a tiny box of a room for a year and worrying about something that was likely moot.

Wilson looked at him with a hint of disgust.  “Yes, House, she’s aware that her father is probably dead.  She really doesn’t need you to point it out to her though, if you don’t mind.  I know it’s a hard thing for you to relate to but sometimes love can make you let go of common sense and be a bit irrational.  So please let my wife hold on to whatever tiny bit of hope gives her comfort and try not to crush her like a bug just for your own amusement.”

“God, you’re irritating and sanctimonious.  I’d say that I’m surprised Cameron hasn’t turned you over to the Nazis yet but then, she’s exactly the same as you so she probably doesn’t notice.”  House was pissed that Wilson assumed the worst of him so quickly, even if the assessment was dangerously close to accurate.  And also pissed that he inadvertently reminded himself of the idea of Wilson and Cameron together.

“So, is it everything you’ve ever dreamed of, living with two women?” House asked snidely.  “If memory serves, Cameron and Cuddy weren’t exactly best friends before.  Close quarters, only one man to go around, must be tough.”

Wilson looked at him strangely before answering.  “They’re perfectly civil to each other, mostly because there is no reason not to be.  I don’t know what you’re thinking is going on but whatever it is, you’re wrong.”

Cuddy’s arrival with three cups of coffee stopped House from answering or Wilson following the conversation further.

“There’s hardly any coffee left,” Cuddy remarked, “so it’s a good thing we have the extra ration cards.  I don’t think Cameron has much food left at all now.”

House thought back to that morning, when Cameron cooked him breakfast and refused to eat herself.  She said she wasn’t hungry but she was noticeably thinner than she had been.  If she only received rations for one person but had been supporting three people for a year, that had to have taken its toll.  She was exactly the sort of person who would silently go without.  He wondered if Wilson and Cuddy were aware of that. 

“How often does she get the extra cards?” he asked casually, watching their reaction.

Cuddy shrugged.  “Off and on, I think.  She’s just careful to hoard extra food when it’s available.  And I think she gets some things from that young man at the hospital who likes her, Doctor Chase.”

House stiffened at that and then feigned disinterest as he noticed Wilson watching him.  “Makes sense,” was the only comment he gave.

“Hopefully we won’t need the cards much longer here,” Wilson said.  “Cameron seemed to think that the papers were nearly ready for us.  She’s been waiting a long time.  Apparently there are lots of people in the same boat.”

“What then?” House wanted to know what plans they had in place.

“A train to France is the first step and then we’ll try to get safely into Allied territory.  I assume your papers are all correct and you won’t have any trouble travelling.  In fact, that should be helpful, having genuine documents to show anyone who stops us.”

“Sure,” House said unenthusiastically.  He hadn’t thought about returning to England and the idea didn’t fill him with any kind of joy.  He hadn’t even really intended to still be alive at this point and, to be completely honest, had not expected to find Wilson alive either.  Now he knew what had happened to his friend and his drive was all gone.  Nothing was propelling him forward anymore.  His puzzle was solved.  There was nothing for him back home.  No friends, no job, no family.  What reason was there for him to struggle back to England?  Wilson and Cuddy would return to their lives and so would Cameron.  He had no life.

“Won’t you be glad to get back to the hospital?” Cuddy asked.  “Think of all those doctors and nurses, going about their daily work without you around to berate and intimidate them.  I don’t remember you taking leave in all the time I worked with you.”

“Things change.”

“How?” Wilson wanted to know.  “How have things changed?  And, more importantly, why are you here, House?  What possessed you to travel across a warzone?”

There was a heavy silence as House refused to reply, but Wilson continued to stare expectantly at him until he rolled his eyes.

“You stopped writing.”

“What?”

“Your letters stopped coming and I didn’t know what happened to you.  So I decided to find out.” 

“You left your job and risked your life, just to find us?”  Wilson looked both perplexed and suspicious, as if he either couldn’t understand or couldn’t believe what House was saying.

House just shrugged.  “I was bored.”

“Did you take leave or did you quit your job?”

Wilson was relentless with his questions, soon figuring out that House’s work status wasn’t voluntary and that led to House admitting his fall from grace, glossing over the humiliating details where he could.  Unfortunately, he divulged enough for Wilson and Cuddy to have a disturbingly clear picture of what he had been reduced to.  His friend knew him well enough to connect the dots.

“You never intended to live through this, did you?”

Another shrug.  “It wasn’t high on my list of determining factors when I set off.”

“You idiot.”  Wilson was angry now.  “I spent all those years trying to keep you alive and fit for society and the second I leave you alone, you try to kill yourself?  I won’t allow it.”

“Have you been stuck in this room with Cuddy so long that you’re wearing her underwear?  Have your cycles synchronised?  Because you sound like a woman.  And a whiny one at that.

“I’m not leaving you here to do something stupid and get yourself killed,” Wilson stated, his arms folding defiantly across his chest.  “Either we all go together or we stay.”

”What?”  Cuddy was shocked.

“Now who’s the idiot?” House snorted.  “You go through all this to get home and you’re prepared to throw it all away… for me?  Your wife will never let you in her bed again.  And I’m not living in that tiny room with you.  Use your brain, man.”

“I told you before, sometimes common sense has to take a back seat to irrationality.  This is one of those times.  I mean it.”

House’s eyes flicked over to Cuddy, to the disbelief on her face at her husband’s stubborn declaration and then back to his best friend, determination evident in the set of his jaw.  He could push this, try to get Wilson to see how stupid his ultimatum was and what it would cost him, but House knew that even trying would cost Wilson his wife’s trust.  So, for once in his life, he gave in gracefully, agreeing to return to England. 

When Cameron came back from work, the atmosphere was still noticeably strained.  After making sure that no one had come by during the day, she went downstairs to make a meal of the little food they had left in the kitchen.  House followed her, eager to get away from the accusing stare of Cuddy and Wilson’s disappointed eyes.  He stood silently, leaning against the doorframe and watching as Cameron worked in the kitchen.  She didn’t engage him in conversation either, preferring to keep her thoughts and questions to herself, for once.  But House was in a foul mood, not happy with Wilson’s emotional manipulation and being forced into doing something he didn’t want to.  He needed someone to take his mood out on, for someone to feel as crap as he did.

“Are you eating tonight?”

Cameron partially turned to face him for a second before going back to her pot.

“No.  I had something to eat at the hospital and I’m not particularly hungry now.  This is just for the three of you.”

“Chase wining and dining you?”

She looked up sharply at that, his question innocuous enough, but she clearly knew him well and knew that there was plenty more under the surface.

“Yes, I ate with Chase.  Why does it matter?”

“It doesn’t matter at all to me.”  House glared at her for a second then let his eyes flick disinterestedly off to the side.  “Now I know what it is you’re prepared to do to survive.  It’s always good to know how low someone is prepared to go.”

“How _low_?”  There was a clatter as Cameron turned off the stove and then shoved the pot violently to the side.  “I don’t call eating with someone _low_.  I’ll admit that I don’t discourage Chase’s interest in me when I don’t have any intention of returning it, but I’m struggling to feed three people with the food allotted to one person.  If being pleasant to him gets me the occasional meal, well, I can live with that.  So I don’t know what you think is going on but you can just stop any more insinuations.”  There was more angry clatter as she pulled out bowls in order to serve up the soup she had prepared.

House snorted quietly.  “I’m sure all that leftover Nazi meat tastes great.  Make sure you swallow politely.”

Cameron practically threw his bowl of soup at him, pushing it into his hands so roughly that some of it slopped over the side, onto his hands and down onto his shoes.

“Why don’t you eat your dinner?” she hissed.  “And just be grateful no one is asking you to do anything for it.”

Gathering up the other two bowls and a couple of spoons, she went up the stairs to give Wilson and Cuddy their meal.  House had successfully managed to piss off everyone within the four walls now and it looked like he’d be eating his meal alone.  He shook the liquid off his hands and grabbed a spoon, sitting at the table and starting on the soup.  It was thin and sparse but it warmed him and quietened the hunger that had begun in his belly.  He felt a momentary flash of remorse at his treatment of Cameron because she hadn’t actually warranted any of his snide comments.  He of all people could understand doing something distasteful simply to fill a need.  Sitting at a table with Chase wasn’t anywhere near as bad as things he’d done in order to get drugs.  She wasn’t even doing it for herself.  Wilson probably realised that Cameron went without food to feed him but House doubted that Cuddy did.  Shut in that tiny room for most of the day, they were hopelessly cut off from the outside world and completely dependent on Cameron for information.  Ever the martyr, she wouldn’t even think of complaining about food.  Still, he wasn’t going to apologise for anything.  She shouldn’t expect him to, not if she was going to flaunt her relationship with Chase in his face.

The evening passed in strained silence, with House refusing to go upstairs.  If everyone was going to be pissed at him, they could do it without him having to ignore the glares directed his way.  Eventually, Cameron came downstairs to wash the dishes and then sat in the living room with a book.  Wilson followed about an hour later, clearly looking for a conversation.

“House…” was as far as he got before a frantic pounding on the front door interrupted him.

Panic spread all over Cameron’s features and Wilson turned for the stairs, even before she could hiss a warning, “Go!” at him.  House froze, not entirely sure what to do.  He could hear a brief burst of frenzied rustling upstairs and his heart began to beat quickly in his chest.  Turning to Cameron, he watched as she visibly composed herself before going to answer the knocking, which had started up again.  It was past curfew; no regular visitor would be out at this hour.

Unable to sit still and wait, House got up and followed Cameron to the door.  As soon as she opened it, a man pushed inside and, without thinking, House moved to block his further entrance into the house.  Leaning his weight against the doorframe, all House wanted was to give Wilson enough time to get safely back into his hidey hole, but it became obvious that the man wasn’t there for Wilson.

Cameron quickly closed the door to the street and followed the man into the kitchen, where he had gone when confronted by House’s bulk in the doorway to the living room.  House followed her and watched as the guy paced the small room, his movement staccato bursts of nervous energy.  He fired something at Cameron in rapid Dutch, waving his hands frenetically in the air as he did so.  She replied in the same language but much slower, using her own hand movements to try and calm him.  Eventually, the guy got the hint that she was having trouble following him when he spoke so quickly and so he slowed down. They carried on a short conversation in Dutch, the man ending it with a pleading, “Please.”

Biting her lower lip as she thought, Cameron nodded and turned to House, ignoring the relief of the man behind her for a second.

“I need to go out for a while.  There’s an emergency I need to take care of.”

“What about the curfew?”

“I’m a doctor.  I can talk my way out of it if I’m stopped.  I’ll be back whenever I’m done.”

“Where are we going?”

Cameron blinked at him.  “_We_ are not going anywhere.  _You_ are going to stay here while _I_ go out.”

“I’m bored.  I don’t want to stay here.  I’ll come along to your emergency.  I can play the doctor card too.  It’s not fair if you get to keep all the fun to yourself.”

“This is not a game, House!” she hissed at him angrily.  “These are people’s lives, not something for you to toy with.  What would happen to Wilson and Cuddy if I’m caught?”

He frowned.  “So you sat around and never left the house before I showed up yesterday?  There will be far less chance of you being caught if you take me with you because then I won’t be chasing you down the street, yelling for you to stop and attracting all sorts of attention.”

There was a silent battle of wills as the two of them stared each other down but it only lasted seconds. Cameron gave in rather than risk House making good on his threat.

“Come on, Marten,” she sighed.  “We need to do this quickly and quietly.”  The last part seemed purely for House’s benefit, mostly because he didn’t think that Marten spoke English and also because Cameron was glaring pretty pointedly at him when she said it.

They left the house and hurried down the street, keeping well out of any lit areas and trying to be quiet.  House struggled to keep up with Cameron and Marten, limping along behind while he tossed another pill down his throat.  He had no idea where they were going or what they were doing, but he felt the need to tag along.  Despite Wilson’s revelations about Cameron working with the Dutch Resistance, he still didn’t think he trusted her to be smart and protect herself.  She would put other people’s safety ahead of her own and he wanted to make sure that there was someone watching out for her.  Even if that someone was as bad at looking after another person as he was.

Their first stop was the hospital, where Cameron led House and a clearly agitated Marten up to the second floor.  She instructed them to wait in the tiny doctor’s lounge while she went to get some supplies.  Marten went and stood by the window, gazing out into the dark night and giving House the chance to sneak off to Cameron’s small locker.  He had it open quickly, the lock flimsy to the point of uselessness and had no trouble locating her keys in the pocket of her labcoat.  He thought about miming to Marten that he was going to take a leak but the guy was so distracted that House didn’t want to waste the time.  Instead, he limped quickly from the room and headed to the locked drug supply room.

It was ridiculously easy to simply walk in and help himself.  He was careful not to take too much of one thing, preferring to spread his theft out over several different types of drugs so the loss wouldn’t be immediately apparent.  Taking too much was greedy and stupid.  If the loss was big enough to be noticed, then he couldn’t come back for more easily.  The night before he left this city for good, he could come back and take as much as he could conceal and carry.  For now, he hoped that if the missing drugs were noticed, it was a small enough amount to be put down to a paperwork error.  He wrapped the vials in several handkerchiefs that he had stuffed in the pockets of his coat, making sure that they were as protected as he could manage.  Once he was satisfied, he locked the door and returned to the doctor’s lounge.

Just as he closed the door behind him, he caught sight of Cameron coming around the corner into the corridor.  Marten looked up expectantly but his face fell when he saw House, not Cameron.  House waited for him to look away again before he made his way over to Cameron’s locker to put the keys away before she came in the room.  He barely had time to shut the door and take a step away before she entered.  At the sight of her, Marten sprang up, clearly keen to get going.

“I’ve got everything I could take without attracting attention,” she stated, shoving a bag into House’s hands.  “Hold this while I see if I can get some ether as well.”

“Ether?”  He opened the bag to take a look at the contents and scowled at the first thing he saw.  “Forceps?  We’re taking this risk so you can deliver a baby?  What the hell for?” 

House held his breath, hoping his rant would distract her as she opened her locker and she wouldn’t notice that the lock was a lot looser than it was since she’d last used it.  He hadn’t had time to do anything more than make sure it was shut before she’d come in.  When she turned to him, a frown on her face, he let out a bit of breath, her focus now on him and not her locker.

“She’s been in labour for over forty hours and she’s not progressing.  She needs help.”

“In all likelihood, she needs a hospital.  Maybe a morgue by the time we get there.  Or are you planning on performing the Caesarean in some dingy room by candlelight?  Because I’m sure that will work out really well.”

Glaring and not appreciating his sarcasm, Cameron simply grabbed her keys and pushed her locked door shut.

“I’ll be back in two minutes and then we’ll go.” 

She repeated the same to Marten in Dutch and then left, with House wondering if she would notice anything amiss in the drug cupboard.  There was no reason for her to suspect him though; she hadn’t even blinked when she’d opened her locker and taken her keys.  So he relaxed and leaned nonchalantly against the wall as he waited.

As soon as she returned, Cameron grabbed the bag from him and put the ether inside, beckoning Marten to leave.  They headed out the way least likely to be noticed, Cameron throwing House an apologetic glance as they went down the stairs, which made him scowl, his irritation plain.  Back on the street, Marten took the lead as they hurried to their destination, again keeping to the shadows and taking back roads where possible.  It only took them about ten minutes but then they stopped outside a shop.  Marten ducked into an alley beside it and led then about halfway down until they were beside a pile of rubbish.  He started pulling pieces aside to reveal a small door.  Inwardly groaning, House swallowed down another pill as he contemplated fitting down there.  It was small enough that Cameron had to stoop and he thought longingly of the vial of morphine in his pocket.

Marten gestured them forward and Cameron stepped in first.  House reached out and grabbed her, his large hand dwarfing her small shoulder.

“We’ll stay together,” he grunted, making sure he had a good grip.  Although it hurt what little pride he had left to need to hold onto her as they descended the stairs, tripping and breaking a limb in the darkness was a really unappealing prospect.  He wasn’t altogether sure he trusted Marten anyway and he didn’t want Cameron any further away from him than she needed to be.

The flight of stairs led to a small basement under the shop, opening into a room that was just high enough for House to stand.  It was a small room and lit by a single dim bulb.  House could see about ten faces staring at him as he entered.  As soon as he stepped off on to the ground, Marten pushed past him and headed to a far corner, where whimpering moans could be heard.

Immediately, Cameron headed over there and House followed close behind, wanting to assess the situation.

“She’s been in labour for over forty hours and actively pushing for the past four,” Cameron informed him.  “Her mother says that she’s fading fast and they can’t progress the baby.  They’ve tried everything they know.”

House just grunted in reply, waiting to see what Cameron was going to do.  He didn’t like obstetrics and had avoided anything to do with it once his mandatory training was done.  Too much crying and hugging and emotional patients to deal with for him.  Plus, there was very little interesting to him in the field.  The baby grew and then came out.  Nature took care of a large part of it and the stuff left to the doctors was boring and repetitive.  Even this held little interest.  Chances were, at this stage, either or both mother and child would die.  It was just waiting to see.  The mother should have been in a hospital hours ago.

“The baby’s in the birth canal,” Cameron announced, “but it’s breach and stuck.  It’s too far down for a Caesarean and she’s too exhausted to push any more.”  After a moment of biting her lip, she continued.  “Give her some ether and I’ll use the forceps to deliver.”

House shrugged and moved forward to take the bottle from Cameron.  He soaked enough onto a pad and then approached the woman’s head.  Her mother watched him warily.

“It will keep her quiet,” he told the older woman, who continued to watch him as he placed the pad over the nose and mouth of the patient, waiting for her to inhale enough to pass out.  At least it would stop the distressed moaning.  While he waited, he watched Cameron holding the woman’s hand and murmuring something in Dutch in a comforting tone.  As soon as she went limp, Cameron spoke to the woman’s mother and Marten, then went to her bag of supplies.  House moved to watch as she performed an episiotomy with the sterilised scalpel and then turned for the forceps.

It took her a while to extract the baby as it was well wedged in the birth canal.  When she finally got the shoulders free, the head followed, along with the cord, which was tightly wrapped around the infant’s neck.  The baby was blue and unresponsive and House knew that it was futile but watched as Cameron attempted to revive it, unwrapping the cord and clearing the airway.  There was a strangled sob from the grandmother at the sight of her grandson but no other sound in the room apart from Cameron’s breaths into the tiny body.  Eventually though, she had to admit defeat and sat back heavily.

“I’m so sorry,” she offered, her voice cracking with emotion as she handed the baby to the grandmother to hold, the older woman sobbing freely now. 

Leaving the family to their grief, Cameron turned her attention back to the patient, delivering the placenta and then stitching the mother back up.  The ether had done its job and the woman didn’t stir throughout the procedure.  When there was nothing more to be done, House took Cameron by the arm and moved her away from the patient.

“Get your stuff,” he instructed, “so we can go.”

“But,” she started and he cut her off right away.

“No buts.  You’ve done what we came here for.  The rest is not your responsibility.  She’s starting to come around and we don’t need to be here for that.  Let them deal with it all.”

“We can’t…”

”We _can_!” he hissed.  “The longer we stay here, the more risk there is.  You’ve done your job and we’re going.”

She almost looked like she wanted to argue but then she nodded her head in defeat, gathering up her bag and speaking quietly to Marten.  All the man did was nod brokenly and then House took her arm again, leading her back to the stairs.  They passed the other occupants of the basement silently, noticing that a couple of the women got up to go over to help the little family.  Then they left, up the stairs and back out into the alley.  Quickly, they replaced the rubbish over the door, obscuring the entrance from anyone who might be passing by, before making their way back to Cameron’s place.  Moving silently and as quickly as possible, they were able to reach her front door without incident.  They hung their coats and then Cameron went straight to the kitchen and began to wash her hands furiously, even though House couldn’t see anything on her skin.

“Do you want some tea or something to drink?” she asked him, without turning around, still wringing her hands under the water.

“Anything stronger than tea in this place?” he wanted to know, more for her sake than his, although he wouldn’t turn down a stiff drink.  But she definitely needed one.

“In the corner cupboard over there.”

He easily found an open bottle of scotch and then took two glasses, glad at least to see that the hand washing had stopped.  He poured them both a decent drink and practically shoved the glass into her hand, forcing her to take it.  After a moment of deliberation, he tried to comfort her.

“The baby was dead before he even came to get you.  If you hadn’t delivered it, the mother would have died as well.”

“I’m sure that makes the family feel better,” she snorted humourlessly.

House shrugged.  “I don’t see why it would, but that’s not the point.  The point is that it’s the truth.  You need to recognise that.”

“I know!” she snapped.  “I’m not an idiot.  I know that I did all I could for the baby and for the mother.  How can you walk away from that situation and not be affected?  All those people…”

House watched her dispassionately as she stared into her drink, words failing her at the moment in the face of the horror that humanity was capable of inflicting upon each other.  For House, this was nothing he hadn’t seen before, on the battlefields of the first war.  He had ceased to be shocked by the depths of depravity man sank to a long time ago.  It was a harsh lesson for Cameron to learn but if she wanted to survive, she needed to get over it and keep going.

“Those people are not your problem.  They are surviving the best they can.  You need to do the same.  Wandering out at all hours is stupid and unnecessary.  How are we going to get papers for Wilson and Cuddy if you get killed or locked up before we can leave?”

“I’ve made sure that if something happens to me, Wilson and Cuddy will still get their papers from someone I trust.”

He rolled his eyes.  “Someone you trust?  Does that mean the milkman you talked to once and struck you as a ‘really nice guy’?”

She glared at him.  “How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not stupid?  And neither am I as naïve as you seem to think I am.  I’ve managed to keep myself –and Wilson and Cuddy- alive without your help.  And I’ll be fine once I’ve gotten the three of you safely on your way back home.”

House froze at that, the almost apology he was thinking of offering her dying on his tongue.

“What do you mean,” he asked slowly, “the three of us?”

She blinked at him, not entirely understanding his question.  “You came here for Wilson.  He comes with Cuddy.  That’s three.”

“What about you?”  He kept his voice low and steady, not wanting to betray the pounding of his heart at the thought of her not coming with him.  It was something that he simply hadn’t considered.

“I have a job.  There are people here who need help and I can help them.  I can’t walk away from that.”

“Sure you can.  It’s easy.  All you have to do is come with me.”

Getting up from the table, Cameron swallowed the last bit of her drink and smiled at him sadly.  “You made it perfectly clear that you didn’t come here for me.  You have who you came for.  I don’t need you to save me.  I’m going to bed.”  With that, she put the glass on the sink and went upstairs, leaving House once again sitting at the table in silence, turning what just happened over and over in his mind.

She was staying here?  That wasn’t right, that wasn’t how this was supposed to go.  Sure, he didn’t come here looking for her but he wasn’t prepared to leave her.  He could have let her go with Wilson and Cuddy, if he had known that she was going to safety.  But this?  Leaving her here to risk her life to help other people?  He didn’t think so.  He wouldn’t allow it.  He let her walk out of his life once because he wasn’t prepared to make an effort and that had turned out horribly for him.  He didn’t think he was prepared to sit through the whole thing again, not when he knew that this time could be different.  He would make an effort this time.  It would never be perfect, never be a fairytale romance and happy ending, but he could try and she would accept him as he was.  And maybe, in between all the times he would hurt her and she would have to forgive him, they could be happy sometimes.  All he had to do was to go after her and all she had to do come with him.  Making a decision, he stood up from the table and went directly to her bedroom, not pausing to think through his actions and allow himself the chance to reconsider, to point out all the ways this could go wrong.  Now was the time for him to act, not think.

He opened the door without knocking, causing her to start, almost dropping the brush she was using on her hair.

“No,” he said plainly.  “You’re **not** staying here.  If you stay to help people, the only thing you are going to get in return, is **dead**.  This is not your war and you can’t change what is going to happen.  You’re one person, you won’t make a difference, no matter what you think or do.”

“House…” she started but he stopped her by holding up his hand, needing to get this out before he clammed up and just went back downstairs.

“You won’t make a difference to this war, but you do make a difference to me.  In this war, you’re just one person.  To me, you’re everything.  I lost you once because I was a frightened idiot, I won’t let it happen again.  Come with me.  Please.”

He had never been this naked emotionally in front of another person and he found he couldn’t meet her eyes once he’d said his piece.  It was up to her now.  This was as close as he came to begging and he wasn’t going to repeat himself.  She either took what he offered or she didn’t. 

“Look at me,” she said softly but with a hint of commandment in her voice that he hadn’t been on the receiving end of before.  Reluctantly, half afraid of what he’d see when he did, he lifted his eyes to hers, searching for what she was going to say before the words left her mouth and became real.  Cameron gave a soft snicker.

“I’ve waited years for you to say something like that to me.  Actually, I waited years for you to just say that you liked me!  I want to believe you, you know that I do.  I just don’t know if I can trust you.  What was it you told me before?  You might mean what you say right now, but it won’t last.  What then?”

House sighed.  “Honestly?  I don’t know.  You’re right not to trust me but I will tell you this: my life is better when you’re in it.  I don’t want to have to go back again.”

Then, he dipped his head, dropping his mouth on top of hers and kissing her gently.  She was still for a second, indecision freezing her, and then she kissed him back, her lips pressing against his in an action that quickly turned desperate, years of repressed sexual desire getting the better of both of them.  He had her now and he was going to take every opportunity he had, while he could.  His mouth opened against hers, demanding, and she gave in to him without a second thought.  Without breaking the kiss, he backed up until he could sit heavily on the bed, before his leg could give out and he found himself on his arse and humiliated.  He had better things to concentrate on besides his balance right now.

Her weight was slight, her body small and soft and mostly hidden under her cotton nightgown.  Kissing led to exploration, his fingers eager to find out exactly what she kept hidden from him, his large hands spanning her waist easily and then moving upwards.  When he cupped her breast in his hand, she let out a low moan that travelled from the back of her throat directly to his groin, goading him into action.  He stripped off her nightgown, determined to have what he’d denied himself all these years.  And she seemed just as eager to have him, her hands mapping the curve of his shoulders, the hair at the base of his neck, down his spine and over the bunched muscles in his back as he pushed inside her.  With a sharp gasp and a clenching of her fingers, she accepted him, relaxing against him as he started to move.  Neither of them spoke, words out of reach for both of them and when they were finished, they simply lay down together and slept.

Before they dozed off completely, Cameron turned over and looked at him, eyes wide and unguarded.

“I’ll come with you.”

“Good,” he mumbled, refusing to think any more on it, now he had what he wanted.


	5. Part Five

The next week passed slowly, the days all bleeding in together in a mindless schedule of boredom for House.  Yet he wasn’t as unhappy as he thought he’d be.  Cameron went to work each morning.  Sometimes House went with her, mostly just to see if there were any interesting cases and to annoy Chase.  The blonde doctor’s eyes would narrow when he saw House and then he would put on a polite and cheerful greeting, professing to be pleased to see them both.  House would then proceed to irritate Chase as much as he could until the younger man left and Cameron would roll her eyes at him.

He didn’t manage to find anything interesting to occupy his mind, nor did Cameron give him a chance to lift her keys and add to his drug stash, so he usually wandered back to her place after a couple of hours.  He spent time beating Wilson and sometimes Cuddy at cards, discussing old cases and listening as they filled him in on what they had been doing over the past couple of years.  House found that he already knew most of this information because Wilson wrote detailed letters like a woman and, once they got to Cameron, they hadn’t been doing much at all.  But he let his friend talk because it seemed to make Wilson feel better and brought him to life, especially when he talked about his friends and family, most of whom they had lost touch with or had disappeared.

Even though he wouldn’t admit it aloud, House enjoyed the company.  For the past couple of years, he had lived an even more solitary life than he had when Wilson was around.  He didn’t like anyone he worked with and no one liked him, so conversations were few and far between.  When he left work, there wasn’t anyone to seek out either.  It didn’t bother him while he lived it but now, he realised that he had missed his friend very much.  He’d missed Cuddy as well, because she knew how to take his teasing and even give it back.  And he’d missed Cameron, missed watching her, missed challenging her and missed being surprised by her.  Few people had the capacity to surprise him nowadays.  Every time he thought he had her figured out, she did something that made him raise an eyebrow and re evaluate his opinion.

When she came home from work, they would eat.  The amount of food was still nowhere near enough to feed four adults, even with the extra ration cards Cameron had acquired.  House watched as she only took tiny portions for herself and claimed that she had something at the hospital.  After the third day, he got fed up with the whole charade and unceremoniously dumped some of his food on her plate, scowling at her when she protested that she’d already eaten.

“I doubt even Chase is stupid enough to keep feeding you every day when you’re not putting out,” he sniped.  “Just eat that so at least you have the strength to stand up and not pass out on your back.  Wouldn’t want to make it any easier for Chase.”

“I’ve managed to keep my feet so far,” Cameron retorted but she ate the extra food without further complaint.  He won that battle.

At night, when they were done with whatever boring thing Wilson, Cuddy and Cameron did to pass the time, he followed her to bed.  After the first night, he didn’t even bother asking and she never questioned his presumptuousness.  Oddly enough, House found that he liked this return to his previous role as her teacher.  Cameron had been married for only a month and had remained celibate after that.  He never delved into her sexual history prior to her marriage but he doubted she even had one.  Instead, he took the opportunity to teach her what he liked, first out of necessity and the pain in his leg and second, simply because he could.  Her husband had not been much more than a boy so he told himself that now she got to experience what it was like with a man.  Proving a far more tolerant and gentle instructor in the bedroom than he was in a hospital, he enjoyed her eagerness to please and her tendency to defer to him in this arena, for now.  It had been a long time since he’d had a woman who actually chose to be with him and it made a difference to be wanted.  At the moment, that was enough.

Until what they had been waiting for actually arrived. 

Cameron came home from work one night and announced that her contact would have the papers for her tomorrow at the hospital.  She could collect them and then they could leave straight away.  Wilson and Cuddy were thrilled and they spent the evening making plans to leave the next afternoon.  House sat there silently and watched, shrugging noncommittally when asked a question.  Only Cameron seemed to notice his apathy, eyeing him with a puzzled look on her face at various intervals, while still engaging with an excited Wilson as he looked forward to being able to actually live a life again, instead of hiding.  None of them mentioned the dangerous journey that was before them, preferring to focus on the good news they had waited so long for.  The hardships would be on them soon enough so they would just enjoy this one night of optimism.

“Are you alright?” Cameron asked tentatively, once they were alone in her bedroom.

“Fine,” House replied shortly.

“Because you seemed…”

“I didn’t want to listen to the three of you go over the same thing fifty times,” he snapped.  “Just shut up.”

And he kissed her, hard, in order to accomplish that goal.  That night, he was rougher with her than he had been before, pinning her wrists to the mattress and pushing her legs apart with his knee.  Aware that he was suddenly taking his fears and frustration out on her, he still didn’t seem able to stop himself, although he made sure he never actually hurt her.  As usual, Cameron took whatever he dished out, a brief look of confusion crossing her face at the strange mood he was in but then she submitted to him without complaint, making him irrationally irritated at both her and himself.

Afterwards, they lay silently next to each other until Cameron couldn’t stay quiet any longer and House rolled his eyes at the ceiling.

“Are you okay?” she asked, the tentative note back in her voice again and he reflected with a tiny bit of guilt that she probably had reason to be unsure of him after that performance.  But he pushed the guilt down because he had never tried to hide who he was and it was better that she realise now.

“My leg hurts,” was all he would offer, hoping that she would recognise the fob off for the reiteration of ‘shut up’ that it was.

“Oh.” 

He thought for a second that she’d gotten it, that she had understood he didn’t want to talk about it with her and would go to sleep, sparing both of them the awkwardness.  But Cameron had never shied away from causing him discomfort, preferring to plough right into the awkwardness with the enthusiasm of a flanker charging in to join a rolling maul.

“You don’t seem very keen to leave tomorrow.”

“Forgive me for not being excited about the prospect of dragging myself through an angry army of German soldiers with you and two people holding fake papers.  Because that will be a really good time.”

“It’s a risk we’re all willing to take.  What about you?”

House scrubbed a hand over his eyes.  She just wouldn’t leave him alone, always wanting to know what he was thinking.  Not even sarcasm deterred her; she just continued to plough ahead.

"I have no problem with risk if there is a chance of reward.  My ‘reward’ is going to be hours of pain and listening to you and Wilson giggle like schoolgirls together.  I’m excited!” 

“I thought the possibility of your best friend and his wife finally being able to live their lives in freedom would be reward enough,” she returned snidely, “but apparently not.  You were in pain to get here, why will going back be so much worse?”

“Get me some morphine,” he instructed, to avoid having to even think about answering her question.  “For the journey back.”

There was a pause while Cameron digested his demand.

“I can’t,” she said eventually, very quietly.

“Yes, you can,” he countered.  “Wilson said that sometimes you used to take drugs for the Resistance, to help them.  Why can’t you help me?”

“No.”

Now he was really pissed, the angry throb in his leg keeping time with the pulse in his temple.

“So your compassion extends to strangers but not to me?  How about Wilson and Cuddy?  Or yourself?  Giving me some pain relief will make your journey easier.”

“I don’t want you in pain but you have enough.  I still have to think of other people, House.”  Her voice was still quiet but there was determination behind her words now and he knew he was going to have to get nasty to get her to budge.

“How do you know what’s enough for me?  Has someone bayoneted you in the thigh and then hacked out half your muscles and you neglected to tell me about it?  Because I could have used someone to talk to who really understood.” 

That was just a warning shot, fired across her bow, to get her to take him seriously.  However, her response startled him and caused him to revise his battle plan completely.

“There’s a war on, House.  One with rationing and barely enough for anyone.  When you steal drugs that are already in short supply, people notice.  And other people suffer.  You’ve already taken drugs from my hospital that were to be given to patients.  Innocent people who are suffering just as much as you.  I can’t let you do it again.”

There was a heavy silence as they both bid a momentary strategic retreat, but it didn’t last long as House wanted to know.

“How long have you known?”

Cameron sighed.  “I suspected when I was told that there were drugs unaccounted for the day after I was in the supply room with you but I tried to tell myself that you wouldn’t do that.  You wouldn’t risk drawing that kind of attention to me.”

House hadn’t even thought of that.  His consideration of Cameron had only extended to her being accused of carelessness and he was sure she’d be able to shrug that off eventually.  To be completely honest, his only real consideration was for himself.

“Then when I came into the break room, you were doing something to my locker and I wondered.  The next morning, more drugs were unaccounted for and they weren’t the stuff that I took that night.  I still wanted another explanation so I checked your coat pockets one night while you were asleep, telling myself that they would be empty and someone else must have done it, someone who didn’t know that I had things to hide from people in authority at the hospital.  But they weren’t.”

“And yet you left them there.  What was the point of going through my things if you weren’t going to give the drugs back and teach me a lesson?” he asked accusingly.  She had gone through his belongings! He worked up some righteous indignation at that, ignoring all the times he had gone through her stuff or things belonging to other people looking for answers.

There was a note of flat irony in her voice that she didn’t bother to hide.

“I just wanted to know.  To know if I meant anything to you at all.  Be careful what you wish for, eh?”  There was a slight rustle of bedsheets as she turned on her side.  “I’m going to sleep.  I have to be at work tomorrow morning.”

They lay there silently for a while until House got up wordlessly and went downstairs.  He grabbed Cameron’s lone bottle of scotch and poured himself a generous glass.  He honestly hadn’t considered that he might be drawing her to the attention of those Nazis that marched through the hospital and what that would mean, not only for her, but for Wilson and Cuddy.  All he’d been thinking about was getting the drugs.  The rewards far outweighed the risk, for _him_.

Reality had come crashing down on him this evening.  He’d been playing a role here and that couldn’t go on.  While Wilson, Cuddy and Cameron were planning their escape, he was sitting next to them, thinking of how he didn’t want to go back, of how it was easier here to be the kind of man that Cameron let into her bed.  When they returned to London, when she found out the extent of his fall, she’d be disappointed.  Oh, he didn’t doubt that she would stay with him, stoically accepting the alienation from her friends and family, choosing her relationship with the drug-addicted cripple over her previous life, but she shouldn’t have to.  Sooner or later, he’d lose his temper or his grip on reality and he’d hurt her, maybe not physically but there were worse things.  Their conversation in bed tonight had proven that.

What she said wasn’t exactly true; she did mean something to him.  She meant a lot to him.  He’d told her so, but she clearly hadn’t believed him and who could blame her when faced with the evidence of what sort of a man he was.  If anything, he was proud that he had finally taught her not to blindly trust other people and that everyone lies.  It was a lesson he’d tried to drum into her numerous times while they had worked together and she had always resisted, preferring to believe in the inherent goodness of her fellow man.  Not any more.  He just wished it didn’t make him feel so bad to have achieved that objective.  He hated feeling like this, responsible for another person’s emotions.  It was why he always avoided emotional attachments.  They brought nothing but pain.

Gulping down his drink, he got up and went to his coat, searching through until he found what he needed.  He had only taken pills while he was here, knowing that the knockout effect of morphine would be readily identified by any of the three other doctors in the house and he hadn’t wanted to deal with their disappointed lectures.  But now, he was in pain and he didn’t need to be.  Morphine could take that away.  Morphine would give him oblivion, for a while at least.

House was well practised in injecting himself and it didn’t take him long to prepare everything.  There was only a momentary pause before he depressed the plunger, furiously banishing Cameron from his thoughts.  As the drug rushed through his veins, he shuddered, picturing it washing away all his pain and leaving him free, clean.  A slow exhale later and he felt much better.  It was better like this.  It was always better.

He sat there for a few seconds, just taking in the peace the morphine offered.  Then, his thoughts already slow and fuzzy, he climbed the stairs back to Cameron’s room.  She might be a self righteous pain in his ass and she might be mad at him, but she was soft and she smelled good, and he liked touching her, feeling her body against his.  She wouldn’t kick him out.  He would just hold on until she gave in. 


	6. Part Six

When she woke up, House was still passed out, snoring thickly and taking up the whole bed, like he owned it.  One heavy arm was slung around her stomach and Cameron slowly manoeuvred herself out from under it until she gave up and just pushed him off her.  There was little chance of her rousing him anyway.  Whatever he’d taken last night had worked its magic and he was deep in slumber.  As much as she hated the fact that he went downstairs and took something, she was glad he had the chance to sleep, the momentary respite from his constant pain.  Every other night, he had slept fitfully and often got out of bed to pace for a while.  He hadn’t realised that she was awake and she didn’t want to embarrass him by drawing attention to the fact that she knew he was in so much pain.  She knew him well enough to know that he only played his pain card when it was some sort of manipulation.  Otherwise, he hated it being mentioned.  It was better that he got some rest and respite before they set off anyway.

She was scheduled to meet Erik sometime this morning at the hospital.  She’d exchange the papers for some jewellery that Cuddy had given her and then leave the hospital early.  There was little in this house and of her life here that she wanted to keep.  She had always been happiest working with House, pushing herself to new knowledge.  Hopefully, she could come close to getting that back.  Her personal relationship with House was uncertain at best and she knew who she was as a doctor.  Even though her husband had been a good man and she had done her best to be a good wife to him, it rankled that she hadn’t had the courage to stand up to her family and trust in her own identity.  She was a different woman now, harsh lessons well learnt, and the situation was different.

Under no illusions that she was bulletproof, she still had to fight the urge to stay here and help the people she could.  But House would always have a hold on her that was stronger than anyone should have over another person.  All it had taken was a few sincere words from him and she gave in to what he wanted.  Preferring not to examine that quality too closely, she instead acknowledged that she still wanted to be with him, the same as she had before she’d originally left.  The difference was that her eyes were open completely now.  His earlier words to her, when he had first arrived, had been harsh but not necessarily entirely untrue.  Maybe she had always harboured a secret desire that he would change for her but not much, just a little, enough for him to let some happiness in.  All she had ever wanted to do was bring some happiness into his life.  That wasn’t a bad thing, in her eyes, but she knew now not to hope for that.  Now, all she wanted was for him to let her love him.  Just give her the chance.

Shaking off the depressing turn her thoughts had taken, Cameron quickly got ready for work.  She had a lot to do today and she didn’t need to be distracted by trying to rationalise something that defied common sense.  Going downstairs, she saw the detritus of House’s drug use still on the kitchen table, so she cleaned it up, resisting the urge to crush the glass syringe into dust.  As much as she hated the drug use, she hated the idea of him in pain more.  He just had to learn to separate his physical pain from his emotional.  Leaving House to sleep off his hit, she quickly headed to the hospital and a busy day of tying up loose ends unobtrusively.  As she walked, she seemed to be seeing everything as if for the first time now that she knew it would likely be the last.  She would never walk this route to work again, on this particular footpath, or cross this road.  Her route home would come from a different perspective so she would never see the world from _here_ again.  It was an odd thought to process.

The night she had heard shouting outside her home, she had never expected that she would find Greg House resisting arrest.  She had opened her door because she thought that it might have been someone needing medical assistance from her and she was desperately trying to come up with an excuse as to why they were breaking curfew.  House being very obviously drunk had made it easy for her but things had changed the second she opened the front door, maybe more so than when she had opened her door to a panicked James Wilson.  Seeing House brought back feelings she had repressed, feeling she had _needed_ to repress in order to go on living her life.  All it took was the unguarded way he was looking at her in his drunken state, his gaze soft and open, and she was transported back to how she’d felt three years ago.

_It was the times when they were alone that convinced her that he wanted her the way she wanted him.  In public, he was the same with her as he was with everyone else, albeit slightly more civil.  But she wasn’t spared his cutting tongue when she made a mistake or missed something he saw as obvious and neither did she expect to be.  She was never going to learn to be a good doctor if she was condescended to or allowed to make mistakes simply because she was a woman and attractive._

_When it was just the two of them though, he was different.  He never praised her or complimented her like other men did, but he could be genuine and the moments when he opened up and spoke honestly about things in his life, things she knew he didn’t discuss with anyone else with the possible exception of Wilson, those were the times when she knew that he respected her.  What she treasured most however, were the times when they simply sat quietly together, no need to fill the silences with unnecessary words.  It was a level of comfort she felt with very few people and she suspected he had with even less._

_That was what she mourned the night before her wedding.  Even until the last moment, she had held out a tiny flicker of hope that he would come to her, to ask her not to marry.  Her better sense told her that his pride and stubbornness would never let that happen but she simply could not tamp down the sense of expectation every time someone knocked on the door of her room that evening.  As the night wore on, so did her distress.  She didn’t want her last memory of him to be words that had crushed her._

_“Doctor House, can I talk to you, please?”_

_“I’m busy, Cameron.”  The book in his hand and his outstretched legs had belied his words but she hadn't called him on it, preferring to continue to try for tact._

_“Tomorrow is my last day here and I was wondering…”_

_“Why don’t you wonder somewhere else and leave me alone?” he had cut her off angrily.  “You’re leaving and you hold no interest for me anymore.  I’ve wasted enough time on trying to turn you into a proper doctor, only for you to throw it all away so you can make babies.  I wouldn’t have bothered in the first place, not if I’d known how useless it was.   I’d have been better off finding a woman I only had to waste my money on, not my time.  At least I’d get something out of that.”_

_Her heart breaking, she had steeled herself not to show her pain to him, knowing it was what he wanted to see.  Instead, she had nodded curtly, offering a terse, “Sorry to have bothered you,” before leaving him alone.  She had walked purposefully from his office, determined to make it to the ladies bathroom before she let her emotions out.  Once she had closed the door behind her, a lone tear escaped her eye, rolling sadly down her cheek, the only time she had ever cried over him.  Breathing deeply, she had waited until she had herself under control before splashing water on her face and returning to work._

_Despite that, she still paused in the church, turning away from her soon-to-be husband and the altar in front of them to scan the area she could see outside through the open door.  She only paused for a second; just enough to acknowledge that House didn't love her enough to stop her and that it was too late.  That part of her life was over now._

Now here she was, preparing to put herself back in that place again.  There was a tiny part of her that hated herself, hated that she had agreed to go back to England with House simply because he wanted her.  She could help people here, but the idea of House actually wanting her trumped her altruism.  Risking possible heartache seemed entirely reasonable.  She wasn’t naïve enough to believe that it would be a perfect life with House, but it was a life she had wanted for a long time.  If she gave up that chance, she would never be able to move past that decision.  For so long, she had been doing things for other people.  This was for her.  She loved him, she wanted to be with him.  It should be that simple.  She shouldn’t feel guilty.

She threw herself into her job for the final day. The time passed quickly.  Erik made the scheduled delivery, the exchange happening in the basement of the hospital, down by the laundry in a dark corner that rarely saw foot traffic.  If they were seen, at worst, people might suspect some sort of illicit affair and not really think twice.  Resisting the urge to take the papers and run home right away, Cameron forced herself to go about her job normally for the rest of the day.  The one concession she did make was to take a bottle of pills for House, just in case.  She wouldn’t give them to him but she would at least have them in reserve if they were needed.  As an afterthought, she also took some antibiotics and first aid supplies.  Chances were they wouldn’t need them but it never hurt to be prepared.  It would all fit easily in her bag and it was better to have them than not.

The one thing she didn’t know how to deal with was Chase.  Despite what House thought of him and the very obvious feelings he harboured for her, Chase had been good to her.  It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that she might not have survived without his help.  The food he shared with her had turned out to be vital and he looked the other way if the odd supply went missing.  He wouldn’t have been able to ignore large amounts of hospital supplies disappearing but Cameron wouldn’t have put him in that position anyway.  His father’s name might give him a certain degree of privilege and protection, but she never wanted to be the one to test it.  She could walk away from almost all of her life here, without a backwards glance, but Chase deserved a goodbye.  She got her chance when he invited her to share his lunch that afternoon.

“Thank you,” she said sincerely, hoping he would take it for the food and not for anything more.  “I really do appreciate it all.”

Chase looked at her strangely for a second before smiling.  “It’s not all altruism, I assure you.  I get the pleasure of your company, so I consider it a fair trade.”

They chatted as they ate, about the war and the American entry, the rationing and the shortages ,and ended up on the weather, as bland and banal as possible.  When she had to return to work, Cameron impulsively leaned up and kissed Chase quickly on the cheek before hurrying back to work.  As she left, she looked back to see him standing there, watching her go with that same strange look on his face.  She put him out of her mind though. She was leaving and would never see him again.  He’d find someone else to focus his attentions on and would probably barely even think of her in a fortnight.  She hoped that he would find someone who could love him back because he was a good guy.

The afternoon dragged on, one patient after another and she struggled to keep focus.  Eventually, she decided to leave early.  It made no difference really and she had somewhere she wanted to visit before she left for good.  After making sure she had the papers tucked securely in her bag, Cameron stared at the contents of her locker for a second before closing the door with a slight shrug.  There was nothing sentimental in there.  The only thing she wanted to keep was her stethoscope, which was already in her bag.  It was pathetic but that stethoscope had been the one thing she had clung to over the past three years, the thing that she turned to in her darkest hours.  Just before she had left London, a parcel had turned up in her letterbox.  When she had opened the plain wrapping, taking note that there was no postmark or address, just her name printed on the front, she had discovered the stethoscope sitting neatly inside.  When she tried to think who would give her an anonymous gift, only one name came to her mind, even though he was still refusing to talk to her civilly.  Rather than confront House and run the risk of being cruelly disabused of her notion, she simply chose to accept the gift gracefully and believe that the man she had fallen in love with was more than the harsh façade he presented.  He had mocked her in her kitchen, when he had first arrived, for holding out hope.  Believing that one tiny gesture was from him was all it had taken to keep the tiny flicker of her dream alive, somewhere in the back of her mind, when she wasn’t focusing on being a good wife or a good doctor.  Every time she came into work, she thought of him and it was a way of staying connected.  It was weak and pathetic but it sustained her and for that, she would not apologise.

She strode out of the hospital without a backwards glance, her bag clutched tightly to her side.  Instead of heading home, she went in the opposite direction.  It felt silly to do this but she owed him…something.  Their marriage had been short but he had been a good man and he had loved her.  She loved him too, in a gentle, companionable way, just nothing like the rough, consuming passion she felt for House.  But, for once, this had absolutely nothing to do with House.

There hadn’t been a body for her to bury, but his parents had put up a small gravestone in their family plot at the cemetery.  Somewhere, she supposed, there would eventually be a memorial with his name on it, along with millions of other names, all young men who never came home to their wives or their parents or their friends.  But for now, this was all she had to go to.

Cameron stood in front of the gravestone and traced her finger over the first letter of his name.  She didn’t speak, not being a person who believed in the afterlife or even that there was anyone to hear her, other than the old gravedigger about twenty feet away.  There was nothing to say anyway.  This was a silent goodbye, a chance to close a chapter of her life that never really got an opportunity to begin.  Who knew what their life together would have been like?  It could have been good, like the old couple three houses down that still held hands when they went out for a walk, even after half a century of marriage; they just didn’t get the years needed to find out.  So she took her time now, hoping that he died without pain and was at rest.  She was the one who was still alive and she had a life to live.

Her trip home was purposeful, no lingering to savour the moment this time.  Excitement was welling up inside her, along with trepidation.  This was it; they were running.  The moment they had planned for so long had finally arrived.  Rounding the corner to her street, she stopped suddenly, her eyes taking in a sight that her brain couldn’t quite comprehend.

Standing where she was, was stupid.  She _knew_ that but couldn’t make herself move.  Halfway down her street, right in front of her house, was a small truck.  There was a soldier standing by the truck, along with several policemen.  Her blood had run completely cold.  Her front door was wide open.  Two men exited her home and then two more followed, dragging Cuddy and Wilson between them.  The sight of her two friends being taken to the truck was enough to spur Cameron into action and she moved forward, not sure what she was going to do but needing to do _something_.  Not now, not when they were so close!  All they needed was another few hours.  This couldn’t be happening.  And House!  Where was he?  In a split second, various scenarios flashed through Cameron’s mind, all involving House’s sharp tongue and irritable policemen.  Panic took over.

Eyes still on her friends, Cameron didn’t see the hand that shot out from the alleyway she just passed and grabbed her upper arm.  She was pulled backwards and pushed up against the brick wall, a hand covering her mouth, preventing the scream from escaping her throat.  Blue eyes met hers and recognition took a few seconds.  House.  Once he saw that she knew it was him, he let his hand slowly drop from her mouth, although his other hand still held her arm tightly, not letting her move.  She tried to shake him off but he refused to loosen his grip.

“You’re alright!”  Her relief was short-lived though because Wilson and Cuddy were still out there.  “Let go, House.  We need to stop them”

He looked at her incredulously, as if he was wondering if she had somehow gone insane in the twelve hours since he’d last seen her.  Even she knew that the words coming from her mouth were impossible, but she couldn’t bring herself to skulk quietly in the shadows while her friends were taken.

“How?” he asked acerbically.  “Do you have a plan for this contingency?  Because if you have some way for us to fight off a dozen armed police with only my cane, do tell.  Any scenario I came up with ended with me bleeding pointlessly to death on the street while Wilson watched sadly from the back of the truck as they drove off.  I really hope yours is better.”

“I…”

“You think I’m just hiding here for fun?  Or maybe you think I don’t care?  That having to watch my best friend being taken by police, probably to his death, doesn’t faze me because I’m a selfish bastard.  Is that what you think?”

The words were almost spat in her face and his hand had tightened on her arm so that it was painful now.  She tried to pull away from him but he was too strong.  However, her movement seemed to make him aware of how hard he was gripping her and he let her loose immediately, although his body still blocked her from going back onto the street.  It wasn’t necessary though, she recognised the sense in hiding.  If the police were at her house, then they knew who she was and would likely be looking to arrest her too.  Depending on where the tip off came from, the police may even be aware of House and he was a far more easily recognisable figure than she was.  Showing themselves would only put them in danger and accomplish nothing; Wilson and Cuddy would still be taken.

“Why are you here?” she asked suddenly and noted that House’s eyes didn’t meet hers.  “Why aren’t you inside with them?”

“I went out,” he answered shortly.  “I turned the corner just as they were breaking your front door down.  I knew there was nothing I could do so I waited here for you, to make sure you didn’t go blundering in and do something stupid.”

“Thanks.”

He ignored her and seemed to be contemplating something.  Once he made a decision, he spoke.

“We need to go now.  Get away from here.  They’re looking for you now, so we can’t take the obvious routes.  Did you get those papers?”

She nodded and he continued on, planning out loud. 

“We can use those identities but I don’t want to test them until we have to.  If we can get to France, we’ll have a better chance.  Even Belgium will be better than Holland.  And we can’t use any route that you discussed with Wilson and Cuddy, just in case they talk.”

“They won’t…”

She stopped at House’s withering glare that plainly said she was stupid if she thought Wilson or Cuddy would be able to withstand any sort of vigorous questioning.  But she continued on because that hadn’t been what she was going to say.

“They won’t be that interested in me.  Not enough to mount a manhunt.”

House scoffed.  “Are you willing to bet your life on that?  Because you’re an in to the resistance movement for them, so I’ll wager that they are _very_ interested in seeing what you can tell them.  We need to run.  Now.”

Biting her lip in indecision for only a second, she realised that House was right, there was no other option.  They couldn’t help Wilson and Cuddy and if she was captured, she would be putting others at risk if the Nazis got any information from her.  The best way for her to help now, was to run and hide.


	7. Part Seven

House sat on a bale of hay and watched Cameron sleep.  Even in sleep, her brow furrowed and she looked worried.  He sighed deeply.  She had reason to worry, he conceded.  They had snuck into a barn under the cover of darkness, once they had made it out of the city undetected.  This wasn’t like his journey up.  A few weeks ago, he hadn’t particularly cared if some farmer found him in his barn because he hadn’t done anything more than trespass, but he couldn’t risk being discovered now.  They would need to leave before the farmhouse stirred and he should get some sleep of his own.  If he didn’t take a pill, his leg would wake him in several hours, which should give them plenty of time to move on and maybe find somewhere to hide.  Hopefully, the more urgent they were, the less time Cameron would have to think and come up with questions he didn’t want to answer.

He tossed his bag down on the floor beside Cameron and lay down, using it as a pillow.  Sleep wouldn’t come though.  His day played through his mind on an endless loop, particularly the choices he’d made.  Some had been stupid, some had been lucky and the most important one had been _right_.  He knew that now.  It was rare that he made a good choice in his life but if they survived this, it would be the best thing he’d ever done for himself.  And if they died, then at least he _made_ the choice.

When he eventually woke up that morning, Cameron was long gone to work.  It took House a while to gather his thoughts properly and remember last night.  He lay there, in Cameron’s bed, surrounded by the smell of her and wondered what the hell he was doing.  What did he have to bring to her life other than pain and unhappiness?  What could he do for Wilson and Cuddy now other than to slow them down?  _What the hell was he doing?_

He ignored the voice in his head telling him that he was just scared, scared of reaching for something intangible, scared that he might find a life with Cameron _wouldn’t_ become the train wreck he feared, scared that he might have been wrong to send her away three years ago and that he’d wasted all that time for no reason.  He was frightened, the voice tried to tell him, of the possibility of happiness and of losing the misery he clung to and hung over him like a shroud.

But he let his common sense drown the little voice out.  They would move faster without him.  They wouldn’t be hampered by his pain.  Cameron would eventually find someone else and be happy.  Logic told him these things and he decided that it would be best if he left now, before Cameron came home.  They would work it out quickly enough, once they saw that his things were gone and that he’d taken a chunk of their cash.  They had plenty of jewellery to get by with and he would need some money to get out of the city.  He wasn’t sure where he’d go but he had to give them a chance to go without him.  As he gathered what he could and closed the front door quietly behind him, he decided to stop off at the hospital. 

Drugs.  He could take some more because who knew when he'd have another chance to stock up.  He wouldn’t talk to Cameron.  He’d hide from her, just observe her from a distance.  That was all.  He’d just see her one last time before he set her free.  Ugh.  He blamed Cameron completely for that disgustingly pathetic thought.  She was clearly infecting him with her sap.  Yet another reason to get away.  But he couldn’t deny that he wanted to set eyes on her.

Of course, he had to pick a time when she was having lunch with Chase.  House watched as the two of them talked, fighting down the urge to go over there and insinuate himself into their cosy little meal.  If he did that though, Cameron might not just let him wander off afterwards and that would put a crimp in his plans.  So he watched from a distance, his teeth clenching together as she kissed Chase on the cheek and left.  The sting of jealousy was uncomfortable to him but he had to acknowledge it.  Could he walk away only to leave her to Chase?  Cameron had only agreed to leave to go with him.  If he wasn’t going, she’d probably stay here like she had originally planned.  And Chase would be here with her.  The fact that he even questioned his decision bothered him.  Since when did he second guess himself or wonder if he did the right thing?  He knew what the most sensible thing to do was.  So why was he now following Cameron down the hallway?

He watched her work for a while, making sure to keep himself hidden and not alert her to his presence.  Over the past week, the nursing staff had become used to him loitering around and now paid him no attention, other than to glare at him if they thought he was going to interfere in something they were doing.  But he had no plans to do that, all he wanted to do was…he didn’t even know.  He had no idea why he was standing here, wasting time watching Cameron go about her job.  It occurred to him that her final memories of him would be their argument and how rough he’d been with her in bed beforehand.  This was ridiculous.  He knew she was occupied, now should be the time he went through her locker and took her keys again.  That was the most sensible thing to do.

The doctor’s lounge was unoccupied when he went inside and he was grateful for that, not in the mood to have to make even the smallest amount of conversation with anyone.  Opening Cameron’s locker was easy as she didn’t change the lock but she had taken her keys.  Damn.  He would have to get into the drug supply room another way.  Deciding to give it a little while, he went and situated himself in a strategic position where he could see the door to the supply room but was not immediately visible to anyone.  If he could see who else had a key, he could lift it later when their back was turned.

Unfortunately, his cunning plan was shot to hell when he realised that he had fallen asleep sitting in the wooden chair in the hallway.  Shaking his head, he looked around.  No one.  He had no idea how long he’d been out but maybe he should just cut his losses and run.  Getting up from his chair, he stretched, rubbing his leg and then reaching into his pocket for a pill.  Sitting in the one position was never a good idea for any length of time.  Just as he was swallowing down the tablet, he noticed Cameron coming down the hallway.  Moving himself out of sight quickly, he watched her go into the doctor’s area and then come out again.  She wasn’t wearing her lab coat so maybe she’d left it –and her keys– in her locker.  A quick check was all he needed.  If her keys were there, he’d stock up.  If they weren’t, he’d leave.  Simple.

Luck clearly wasn’t on his side because Cameron’s keys weren’t in her locker.  He shut the door hard, frustrated because he’d just wasted most of the day hanging around for no reason.  All he’d accomplished was to hate himself just a little bit more.  It was time to leave.  He went into the small bathroom off the main area and washed his face, splashing the cold water in his eyes in an attempt to sharpen up.  He was done here.  About to leave the bathroom, he paused, hearing voices in the other room.  Normally, he wouldn’t have even acknowledged the other people but one of those voices was Chase and he was agitated.  House cracked open the door so he could hear what was going on, glad that the conversation was in English.

“But you promised!” Chase was accusing someone, but House couldn’t see who as the blonde doctor was blocking his view.

“It is unfortunate, Doctor Chase, but it can not be helped.  She has done too much; we can not let her just leave.”  The heavy German accent would have given away the identity of Chase’s companion, even if the Nazi officer House had seen on his first day here hadn’t stepped into his sightline. 

“I swear, if you’ll just let me take her, we’ll leave here and she won’t do anything like this again.  I give you my word.”

The Colonel sighed, clearly impatient.  “She has information that we are very interested in obtaining.  I was not aware of this when I agreed to release her into your custody.  The _Deutsches Reich_ thanks you for your information and your loyalty to _der Fuehrer._  But hiding fugitives is a grave crime and your Doctor Cameron cannot be allowed to simply break the law and walk away.  _Heil Hitler_.”

Then the man turned on his heel and strode out of the room without so much as a backwards glance at the young doctor who now sat, shoulders slumped and staring at the floor.

“What did you do?”

Chase cringed away in the face of House’s quiet yet obvious fury.  There was a split second where the younger man contemplated denying everything but it was clear that House had over heard the conversation.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen this way, I swear.”

“What the _fuck_ did you _do_?”

“I thought that if the police took those people away, then she wouldn’t leave me.  I made a deal with the colonel, to keep her safe.  But…”

“Golly gee and the Nazis have proven themselves to be so reliable and trustworthy during this war.  What’s the world coming to when you can’t trust the word of a power-hungry psychopath?”  House just looked at Chase in disgust.

“I gave them money.  And information.  He said they would just take the others and then I could take Allison away from here.  She wasn’t supposed to be punished!”

“But it was okay for her friends to be taken away and probably killed?”

Chase just hung his head and mumbled something intelligible.  House had to resist the urge to swing his cane in a wide arc that just happened to connect with that stupid blonde head.

“How did you know?” he asked, suddenly curious.  Cameron had been careful, he was sure of that.

“I…”  Chase stopped and tried again.  “Sometimes I would walk past her place, just to check that she got home safely.  I noticed a few things so I started watching more carefully and I just…worked it out.”

House stared at Chase while he processed his words, suddenly hoping that the younger man was ‘watching carefully’ while he spent his nights in Cameron’s bed.

“You stupid fucking bastard,” was all he said before he too left Chase sitting there.  He had a choice and he didn’t have much time.  Who to get to first: Cameron or Wilson?  If he tracked down Cameron in the hospital, she might have a chance to get away before the Nazis found her.  If he tried for Wilson, he would be leaving Cameron at the mercy of the colonel who was already in the building.  How much time did he have before they descended on Cameron’s house?  If he found her first, she could move a lot quicker than him and could maybe warn Wilson.  Too many ifs and maybes, but since when did he shy away from making the tough calls?  He did it all the time with the lives of his patients.

Cameron.  She was closest.  She was his best chance.  He limped as fast as he could towards her floor, trying to ignore the burning in his thigh as he increased his pace.

In frustration, he slammed his hand down on the nurse’s desk, the loud crack making the woman jump and step away from him.  Where the hell was she?  No one seemed to know, even though she wasn’t scheduled to leave for another hour or so.  She wasn’t treating patients, she wasn’t doing paperwork, she wasn’t doing rounds.  He was about to head to another department to see if she was looking for a consult when he noticed the Nazi colonel entering from the opposite door, two uniformed soldiers marching behind him.  Quickly, he walked away, reaching the exit just in time to hear the colonel demand that Cameron be paged over the hospital loudspeaker.  There was nothing he could do now, not unless he knew where she was coming from and could intercept her.  And he had no clue.

He had no chance with Wilson, either.  A policeman was standing guard on the front step of Cameron’s house and there was another one guarding the rear exit as well.  They were clearly waiting for orders, but House was willing to bet that there was no way he’d be able to even get close to the place without being arrested or shot.  Once again, he was faced with the knowledge that the best thing, the sensible thing to do, was to leave.  To walk away.  He couldn’t help Wilson or Cuddy.  He couldn’t find Cameron and she was likely in custody by now.  No one knew where he was.  He had money.

But he couldn’t leave.  Not if there was a chance that Cameron hadn’t been captured.  Not if there was a chance that she could walk blithely down her street before realising that she had been ratted out.  So he hid in the alleyway and watched as the truck rolled into the street five minutes later and the front door was kicked in.  He could see the police swarm into the house and hear their shouts. There was nothing he could do until he saw Cameron standing stock still, staring in horror at what was taking place.  It wasn’t until he grabbed her that he could _do_ something.

Now, here he was, on the run, hiding in barns again.  It felt almost as if his life had come round in a cruelly taunting circle.  When he’d left England, he’d been prepared to die to find out what happened to his best friend.  Now, he’d solved that puzzle, only to find himself on a different journey, almost right back where he started.  The difference was, this time he was trying to stay alive.  He still had nothing to go back for.  His best friend was gone again.  But now he had her.  If finding out Wilson’s fate had kept him going before, now keeping Cameron alive was doing the same thing.

He didn’t know _why_ yet.  Wilson would probably spout some rubbish about letting love in but that wasn’t it.  His feelings for her hadn’t really changed; he’d always felt this way.  He had loved her when they worked together three years ago.  He had loved her when he told her to go and marry another man.  He had loved her when he stole drugs from her.  And he had loved her while he planned to leave her without a word twelve hours ago.  Whatever he was, he was not the sort of man who let emotions like love guide his actions.

Wilson had once teased House about the possibility of Cameron influencing his behaviour, making him a nicer, more tolerant person.  House had rightly scoffed at that idiotic notion and had proved Wilson wrong on countless occasions.  But when he saw Cameron standing on the road that afternoon, he had felt something stir in him that he hadn’t experienced in a while, something he had always scolded her for possessing. 

Hope.

Perhaps he wasn’t as immune to her as he wanted to believe.  In the midst of a war, in the middle of their own personal tragedy that he could do _nothing_ to stop, the very sight of her gave him a glimmer of hope.  He didn’t know how she escaped being captured by the colonel at the hospital or why she wasn’t at the house when the police came, but it didn’t matter then.  She was there and they had a chance.  He’d made his choice when he decided to wait for her, on the slim possibility that she was still free.  He’d chosen hope over logic, because he wasn’t ready to face a world without her in it.  A week ago, he’d manipulated her into staying with him because he was frightened of losing her again.  Then his fear had led him to try and run, but she didn’t need to know that.  All she needed to know was that he was here with her now and he planned to stay. 

He was still angry, still rude, still in pain, still intolerant, still needed painkillers.  Cameron would have to live with that because he wasn’t going to change.  And she _was_ going to live.  Losing Wilson was about all he could take.  Having to stand there uselessly and watch his best friend dragged away to a probable death had cut him deeply, even if he didn’t outwardly show it.  He hadn’t been lying to Cameron when he’d told her that any plan he could come up with to help Wilson ended up with him bleeding to death on the street.  What he hadn’t shared was exactly how close he had come to doing it anyway.  It was only the slim possibility that she might not yet be in custody that had kept him hidden.  So she needed to keep safe now.  He’d survived one war and this one couldn’t last forever.  All they had to do was to stay smart and trust no one but each other.  Somehow, that prospect was scarier than facing down a battalion of angry Nazis, but he was prepared to try.

He looked over at her, easily making out her silhouette in the darkness of the barn.  He’d watched her before, wanting to touch her, but never this close.  He’d never felt like he had proper permission to touch her as he wanted to before.  It was no effort for him to recall her final day at the hospital when they had worked together, how he had avoided her, not wanting to deal with her or to listen to her tell him goodbye.  That night, he had watched her eat with her parents at a restaurant, making sure he was hidden from sight, pulling his coat tightly around his body, mostly to protect his leg from the cold air and resisting the urge to step forward and take her hand, to drag her away with him.  All he had done then was watch, too much of a coward to take a step forward.  Was he any different now?  He thought so.  He’d taken a step forward; now he just had to stay steady.  As she stirred restlessly in her sleep, House reached out a tentative hand and touched her hair.  The comforting gesture felt awkward but he continued, stroking softly until she settled back down.  Instead of withdrawing, he shuffled closer to her, telling himself that sharing body heat would be better for both of them.  The fact he enjoyed being this close to her was just a happy coincidence, one that worked out well for him.  Turning on to his side, he allowed his hand to slide under her shirt, feeling the softness of her skin against his palm and the rise and fall of her diaphragm, reassurance that she was still with him.

Maybe they would come out the other side alive and together.  Who knew?  What he did know was that if there was a woman patient enough to put up with his crap and strong enough to stand up to him when it needed to be done, then that was the woman he wanted to be hiding from Nazis with.  And if they survived the Nazis, then the rest of life shouldn’t present too much of a problem.

#  _“To live without hope is to cease to live.” - _ _Fyodor Dostoevsky_ __

 


End file.
